As the owner of a fixer-upper farmhouse in Northfield, this was both emotional and literal. “A Widow’s Guide to Becoming a Handyman” is the upcoming book written by Susan Weissmann-Huehn about her life and experiences before and after her husband’s passing. Weissmann-Huehn said the book has a unique way of telling her story in the way the chapters are presented.

“It alternates chapters,” she said. “The first chapter starts when the phone call came from the hospital something had happened at church. The second chapter is when we met at Heritage Fest [in New Ulm]. The book alternates chapters moving forward from him dying and from us meeting.”

The phrase “love at first sight” is one often reserved for fictional novels and movies, rarely playing out the same way in real life. But for Weissmann-Huehn, that happened when she met her husband Klaus.

“I met my husband at Heritage Fest in 1985,” she said. “It was right after I graduated from college, and I had just taken my nursing boards. I went to Heritage Fest to practice speaking my German and started speaking with one of the choir members. It was the roommate of my husband. We went and had a beer in the beer tent. We met that first Thursday night of Heritage Fest. We fell in love at the dance in the beer tent, but neither one of us acknowledged how we were feeling.”

Klaus and Susan Weissmann-Huehn sit for a photo during their engagement in Rome in 1989. The couple first met at Heritage Fest in 1985.

After a year of separation, with Klaus moving back to Germany and Weissmann-Huehn pursuing a career in nursing, Weissmann-Huehn sent a letter to Klaus professing how she felt. At Christmas that year she flew to Germany with her family to see him. Weissmann-Huehn said this was the time they were finally able to say how they felt.

“We started communicating every week,” she said. “This was before Skype and zoom and email and WhatsApp. We called on Sundays at four. It was my 4 p.m. and his 11 p.m. We’d call and we’d alternate weeks. I started trying to get a job as a civilian working for the military. I wanted to move overseas to be with him because I spoke German and he didn’t speak English.”

After two years, Weissmann-Huehn decided to sell all her belongings and move to Germany to be with Klaus in 1988. This was on the condition he would move back to America with her after some time had passed. In 1991 the couple moved back after Klaus found an old farm house he wanted to fix up and restore in Northfield. After twenty years of marriage, raising kids, and working on the house, Klaus died unexpectedly in November of 2012. Weissmann-Huehn described what happened on that fateful day.

“He left for church on a Sunday morning,” she said. “I was working on my PhD at the time. He said, ‘Should I stay home with you today? I really want to be a good husband.’ I said, ‘No, go ahead. Do what you love.’ It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, he was making stone soup. All of the children brought vegetables and he worked with the children in the kitchen to cut the vegetables and he put them together in a soup. The kids went back to their religious education and the soup was done. They found him laying by the serving table. He fell over, broke his nose on the table where the soup was to be served and they found him there. He was dead. And we ate the soup at his funeral. It was pretty incredulous.”

Weissmann-Huehn said the first year after his passing was learning to survive life as a single person. She contemplated quitting her PhD. But Weissmann-Huehn said she continued on as Klaus had wished for her to pursue her dream.

Klaus Weissmann-Huehn stands on the roof of their fix-it farm house as he works on making repairs. Klaus worked on several home improvement projects from 1992-2012, leaving several unfinished after his passing.

“He really had encouraged me to go back and get a PhD,” she said. “I decided I needed to do it in his honor. I kept going one step at a time, and I broke things down into small chunks. Like ‘today i’m going to write a paragraph for my paper that’s due on Sunday.’ It was all about survival and what I needed to do to survive moving forward.”

Weissmann-Huehn’s book tackles the grieving process and the emotions she went through while also learning how to continue the projects Klaus left behind after his passing. Weissmann-Huehn said there are several takeaways she hopes people are able to grab from her experience.

“I want people to know grief is really personal,” she said. “Grief is messy, it’s turbulent, and it doesn’t have a beginning and an end. It doesn’t happen according to a timeline or stages. I want people to know they’re never alone. It’s really important to reach out to people and ask for help when you need it; either with your house or with your own life. I had a gaggle of widows I was fortunate enough to connect with. They were really my lifeline. Remember you’re not alone. It’s really important to ask for help.”

A launch event for the book will be at Schell’s Brewery October 22 from 4-7 p.m. The book itself will be available for purchase starting October 1 at https://icecubepress.com/2023/02/20/a-widows-guide-to-becoming-a-handyman-2/. For more information, go to Susan Weissmann-Huehn’s website at https://susanhuehn.com/

Klaus Weissmann-Huehn shows his son Peter how to use a backhoe as they tear into the ground near a tree. Susan Huehn said that Klaus stayed at home and raised the kids while working on the home early on, as he knew very little English.