“Something just shut off in me,” she said. “For most people, that doesn’t happen, even in a hard loss. But for me, it was like I had nothing left, and no way to communicate that.”

While she knew other people who’d lost loved ones, Gilats somehow felt that the impact of Dayton’s death to cancer at age 52 was different, that it had shaken her to the point that she might never recover. For more than a decade, the St. Paul native was overwhelmed by a deep sadness that impacted every part of her life.

Read the full interview in the Kenyon Leader.