This CNN “Heroes” piece touched me. It’s the story of a Maine woman who’s state trooper husband was killed in the line of duty. He planned to become a minister after retiring.

Instead, the fallen trooper’s widow, Kate Braestrup, is the one who shows up at accident scenes and comforts victims’ families.

She calls what she does “a ministry of presence.” Or as she writes in her new memoir, “Here If You Need Me,” (Little Brown, $23.99), the job “requires me mostly to just show up, shut my mouth and be.”

A trim, vivacious woman with curly brown hair and gray-green eyes, Braestrup said her entry into the clergy and law enforcement was an outgrowth of her husband’s death. “I didn’t ask for the experience and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but it happened and it became something you could turn into a blessing,” she said.

Blessing the moose: Trooper’s dream lives on in widow’s ministry – CNN.com