A widow’s healing journey

On May 18, 2018, in the early evening, my husband died. We hadn’t planned on it. I thought we would have more time. Isn’t that always the case?

But we didn’t. In a matter of an hour and a half, Scot was dead. He had a heart attack. The Widow Maker. Blocked left ventricle. 

I don’t go back to those days very often now. It was seven and a half years ago, after all. The first days and months after he died, the last few hours played on repeat like a video in my mind’s eye. Over and over I lived those moments in the emergency room, the crowded space filled with doctors and nurses and who knows who. I remember a young medical intern—Asian, female, perfect English,—who came up to me and so kindly offered her condolences. I think back now and figure I may have reminded her of her own mother. 

It was a Friday evening. That afternoon the offer we had made on a condo fell through. We talked contingency plans—living at the lake, staying at a Residence Inn when in the city, making do while we were between homes. We had just sold the house where we had raised the three kids, and the closing and vacate date were six days away. I had been stressing about getting everything moved in time, but Scot didn’t seem too worried. He said I could handle it. He had work to do. 

The stress of the move fell away when his heartbeats stopped. I don’t even remember thinking about the move, which only a few hours ago had been top of mind. In those final seconds all I could think about was how I was going to tell the kids, how we would tell his mother, how I was going to keep going, how unreal it was for my heart to keep beating and his to have stopped. 

My son’s wedding shower was scheduled for the next day. I remember as we all stood together with my future daughter-in-law, I said, “We can still have the shower. It will be OK.” A part of me wanted everything to be normal, when, of course nothing was normal. The shower was postponed. 

Two days later, the realtor called me to tell me the seller changed his mind and accepted our offer. I told him, “Scot died. But I’ll still buy the condo.” It was a surreal time.

Scot’s fraternity brothers and my family cleared out our home in time for the closing. Don’t ask me how it all happened. Magic. 

Thirty days later I moved into the Hopkins Landing Pad condo. We had talked about calling it our Landing Pad because we figured it would be a spot to stop and rest between adventures. 

I remember many early mornings, waking up to the summer sunrise, walking around the quiet streets of Hopkins, feeling the strangeness of being alone. I was just beginning my writing career, and like so many other people recovering from trauma, I used my writing to heal. It was a way to tear the band-aid off, examine the wound, and put the bandage back. Some days the wound would be bigger than the day before; some days the wound was the same; some days the wound was smaller. Some days the wound was oozing and bleeding and I had to leave it open, uncovered, raw. 

Condo View from balcony, June, 2018

I began a remodel of the condo, making it my own. I customized the kitchen and the center island as a focal point. I hung a huge chandelier that had been in our previous home in the second bedroom that was morphed into a den/TV/sitting room. After a year of remodeling, I felt it was all that I wanted and needed. 

The adventures Scot had dreamed of became my dream. I spent five years writing, traveling the Rocky Mountains, skiing one resort after another. It was a ski bum’s dream, but I wasn’t living like a bum. It was a ski bum’s high life, staying at condos, AirBNB’s, on friends’ couches or guest rooms. 

One trip took me to Taos, New Mexico. I was with Cathy Blinken. We came off the mountain and Cathy said, “We gotta move here. This place has got the VIBE!” And she was right.

Two years later I was living in Santa Fe, livin’ the dream. At first I was about 50/50 Hopkins and Santa Fe. Then in the past year, I only spent about six weeks in Minneapolis. I knew it didn’t make sense to keep the Landing Pad. My heart was in Santa Fe. 

My daughter came to help me pack up and declutter to get The Landing Pad ready to show. She created  social media content, Swedish Death Cleaning with my Boomer Mom. The Condo sold in 24 hours. I had to be out in less than 30 days. Mel and her husband Tom helped me pack the first day, and Jan, who had helped me raise my kids and kept me sane during my working career, came to finish the packing and cleaned the empty condo for the new buyers. 

On October 6, 2025, the movers packed up the Landing Pad and the sale was finalized. 

As I reflect on these past years, I realized that at first I checked the widow wound daily/hourly/by the minute. As the days and months passed, daily became every few days, which became every few weeks, and then sometimes I would realized I had forgotten to check the wound. I didn’t have a bandage on it anymore. The wound was gone, but it left a scar. The scar reminds me it happened. The scar is forever. The scar doesn’t hurt, and it is strangely comforting. It reminds me of how sad, scary, and irrevocable it was to lose a life partner and best friend.

I had family that encouraged me to live. My kids never held me back. They were suffering on their own, in their own way. I hope I was there for them the way they were there for me—always, steady, lifting me up. 

People have asked me how I feel about leaving the Landing Pad and moving so far from family. The Landing Pad served me well. It allowed me to regroup, heal, and create a new life. I got back on my feet at the Landing Pad. 

As I packed up and the movers gathered up the last remnants of my Landing Pad life and put it in their truck, I realized that the Landing Pad had become a launch pad, catapulting me to the next phase of life’s adventures. 

I closed the door for the final time, memories of the days when the Landing Pad was my refuge where I went to lick my wounds flooded my brain and mind’s eye. Time really had healed me, and I felt the strength of friends, family, neighbors and relationships old and new, follow me down that hallway for the last time.