In 2020, Connie Sherburne's husband of 31 years, Peter, died in a crash while piloting their small plane.
Sherburne, a practical person, immediately focused on what needed to be done.
"I went home that evening, and the next morning, I got up and I thought, 'Hit the ground running. You've got all this to take care of.'"
She drove to their insurance company in Escondido, Calif., to transfer the insurance for Peter's truck into her name. Because of the pandemic, the office was staffed by just one person. The woman opened the door to let Sherburne inside, and they sat across from each other at a desk.
"It didn't take her but a few minutes to take care of why I was there," Sherburne recalled.
"When she got done, she stopped and she looked at me across her desk, and she made sure that I was looking at her — that she had my full attention."
"And she said, 'OK, so now that we've finished with that, people are going to stop and ask you, "How can I help?"' And then she gave this pregnant pause, and she said, 'Let them.'"
Sherburne took in the advice, absorbing the moment. She wasn't the kind of person to reach out to others for help.
"But because she said it with such force, it really, really made sense to me," Sherburne said.
As soon as she got home, she realized that she did need help. The firewood she used to heat her home was running low, and winter was around the corner. Chopping wood was something Peter had always done. But this time, she asked a friend to take care of it.
"So many, many people did little things and big things to help me," Sherburne said. "One of the neighbors actually cooked for me for four years — dinners — and her husband delivered the dinners to me."
Sherburne says she would have never reached out for support if not for the advice of the woman at the insurance company.
"In the back of my mind, I kept hearing her voice, you know, 'Let them.'"
A few years later, Sherburne went back to the insurance office to tell the woman how deeply her words had affected her. But the agent didn't work there anymore.
"So I just wanted to tell her how much that meant to me," Sherburne said.
"It was such a little thing for this woman just to say that to me. But she didn't realize what a huge thing it was going to be to help me through all this."
My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.
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