Six Years Later: Amanda Kloots Still Connected to Nick Cordero

Six years can feel like both an eternity and a moment when you’re grieving someone you loved. For Amanda Kloots, the passage of time since Nick Cordero’s death in July 2020 hasn’t meant moving on—it’s meant something altogether different. On Sunday, July 5, Kloots marked the anniversary with a deeply personal Instagram tribute that shifts how we talk about loss: not as something to close the chapter on, but as a relationship that simply changes shape.

Cordero, who was 41 when he died from COVID-19 complications, left behind a legacy that extends far beyond the stages and screens his voice graced. The Broadway performer was magnetic—someone people gravitated toward, someone who loved fiercely and lived without reservation. His widow described a man who taught her to slow down, to listen, to believe in herself. That’s the kind of impact that doesn’t fade with anniversaries.

What strikes hardest in Kloots’s message is her refusal to frame grief as closure.“Even though he is gone from this earth, I almost feel more connected to him spiritually now,”she wrote. She talks about still asking Nick for signs, still receiving them, still talking back. It’s not denial or magical thinking—it’s a framework for staying in relationship with someone you can’t physically hold anymore. For a woman raising their son Elvis while navigating life without her partner, that spiritual anchor matters.

The tribute also honored something specific: the 95 days during the COVID lockdown when Kloots sang Nick’s song“Live Your Life”online, watching the community rally around him and help transform a personal nightmare into a moment of collective hope. That story—of a husband fighting for his life while his wife fought to keep him visible and loved—resonates because it captures both the specific anguish of the pandemic and the universal truth that sometimes love is the only weapon we have.

Kloots has continued honoring Nick’s memory through faith and ritual—reading children’s Bible passages with Elvis each night, finding a church in L.A., building a life that includes him even in his absence. That’s not stagnation. That’s love with nowhere left to go but inward and upward.

Six years isn’t closure. It’s just the point where grief and gratitude start to look the same.