Hearing a certain song, usually country music, reminds Erickson of her late husband.

"I don't know if it gets any easier," she said.

Anniversary

The Aug. 6 anniversary will be hard. Erickson will attend the ceremony to dedicate a monument near the closed mine entrance.

Like Black, she too has a pending lawsuit. She's adamant in thinking that all of the deaths could have been prevented if key people had made better decisions. Erickson has thanked families of those rescuers who were injured or gave their lives.

"They are heroes to us," she said. "I'm so sorry that it took their loved ones, too.

"My husband would have done the same thing," Erickson said.

"They're all family out there," Olsen added.

But now Erickson needs more than ever to be near her immediate family.

As one more train rumbled by shaking the house and drowning out voices, she said she won't miss that. For her, it's time to move on.

"It's so hard to leave my home, where my life revolved around Don," she said. "I know Don would be first to say, 'Go, go be with your family."'

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com