The first decisions I faced were financial. Stay in the house or sell? During our twenty-eight years of marriage, John and I had lived in a variety of houses. We started our life together in a one bedroom apartment. Over the next several years we lived in a 1940s bungalow we remodeled: a house we built and later sold due to a job loss, and a 980 square foot town house we rented while John was between jobs. Oh, I forgot to mention the nine months we lived with his mother with our furniture and personal belongings stored in her attic and basement. I guess, my husband's old bedroom, wouldn't be considered a house.
In 1992, while I was still in graduate school, we purchased a house in rural Afton, Minnesota. The house needed remodeling but the awesome setting captured our hearts. Over a period of seven years we updated the house in phases. In the fall of 1999, we finally completed the final stage of the project with plans of paying off the mortgage and spending our retirement years together enjoying the view.
John's sudden death on June 30, 2000 devastated me and threw me into a tailspin of decisions. I never expected to be left alone at the age of 53. To get out from under the mortgage, my first impulse was to sell the house. I wasn't sure I could meet the payments on my teaching salary. Luckily, we had a wonderful attorney, Ole, a friend of my husband's. He encouraged me to stay in the house for at least a year. His advice "Don't make any major decisions unless you have to. Call me anytime" provided assurance and hope as I worked my way through that first year alone.
More decisions presented themselves in the years that followed, but as I look out the window at the beautiful, snow covered St. Croix Valley, I thank God and Ole for helping me make the decision to "hang on" to the house. Everyone's situation is different, but surrounding yourself with people you trust can help make those tough decisions easier as you struggle to "hang in there" after the loss of a spouse.
