In the days after a bus traveling from a Connecticut casino crashed last month in the Bronx, the bodies of 14 victims were laid to rest. But the body of the 15th and final victim, Wang Jianhua, has lain in a funeral home in Chinatown while his widow, in China, has sought permission to come to the United States for his funeral.
On Wednesday, the widow, Lin Yaofang, said American consular officials had granted her a visitor’s visa. “There are so many emotions; I can’t describe them,” said Ms. Lin, reached by telephone at her home in Gui’an, a rural village in Fujian Province. “I am so relieved. I get to see his face one last time.”
Ms. Lin said she hoped to fly to New York next week. It would be her first trip out of China; the farthest she has ever traveled from home, she said, was to Guangzhou, in Guangdong Province, for the visa interview at the American Consulate.
The hard life of Mr. Wang, 40, was described last month in an article in The New York Times. He and Ms. Lin grew up poor in Fujian Province, and they met and married about 10 years ago.
They had two children, a boy and a girl, though Mr. Wang struggled to support his family working odd jobs and driving a taxi. In January 2008, he left China and, with the aid of smugglers, was brought to New York, where he found work as a restaurant deliveryman and lived in small, crowded apartments on the Lower East Side and in the Bowery.
Mr. Wang’s years in New York were marked by long days of toil, stress and deep longing for his family. He regularly wired money to China to support his wife, children and sick mother, and to pay off his smuggling debt. His friends said he had hoped to bring his family over to join him; he had petitioned for asylum on the basis of his opposition to China’s family-planning policies, a justification commonly used by Chinese asylum-seekers.
Ms. Lin said the past several weeks — from her husband’s death to the visa approval — had been dizzying and upsetting. On Wednesday, the visa interview, which took place two days earlier, was a blurry memory.
“My head felt huge and swollen the entire time,” she recalled. “Tears kept falling down my face. I just remember they asked quite a lot of questions. My mind was just very chaotic. I was so nervous.”
Grace Meng, a New York State assemblywoman, said her staff and the office of Representative Nydia M. Velázquez had helped to facilitate the process for Ms. Lin. “We just wanted to at least be able to give her that opportunity,” Ms. Meng said, adding that in her experience, consular officials had been “very understanding” in such situations.
In New York, Lin Changshui, a friend of Mr. Wang’s, said he and other friends planned to receive Ms. Lin and to care for her during her visit; they had found a place for her in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Ms. Lin said she had not yet given much thought to the funeral ceremony but hoped to cremate her husband’s body. “No matter what happens,” she said, “I will bring his ashes back, back to China.”
Kirk Semple reported from New York, and Xiyun Yang from Beijing. Jeffrey E. Singer contributed reporting from New York.
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