After Broadway star Nick Cordero died following a three-month battle with COVID-19 earlier this month, his widow, fitness trainer Amanda Kloots, was left looking for a sign of his presence.
Kloots wrote on Instagram Thursday that during a walk with their 1-year-old son, she had asked Cordero to "show me a sign that you're here with me and Elvis."
She did not specify what type of sign she hoped he'd send, but recalled that when Cordero made a vision board earlier this year, he only included two images, and one was the Geico gecko.
The gecko, she added, represents "incredible healing and cleansing," and seeing one means "you are strong, fearless and can overcome anything."
"I had the People magazine [with Cordero on the cover] on my bed last night because I was going to read it finally. It fell off the bed and landed face down and on the back cover was the Geico gecko," she wrote. "Out of all the ads that could have been on the back of Nick's issue, THIS WAS THE AD!"
"I believe this was a sign from Nick! It was his cheeky way of saying, 'Hi honey. I’m here still! I’m with you,'" she added.
Kloots kept fans updated on Cordero's fight against COVID-19 for months, asking her Instagram followers to sing his song, "Live Your Life," every day at 3 p.m. PT in his honor.
Cordero, 41, first went to a Los Angeles hospital on March 30 with what he believed was pneumonia, but was later diagnosed with COVID-19 and placed on a ventilator. Over the next few months, he sustained several lung infections and required a leg amputation. He died on July 5.
"I am in disbelief and hurting everywhere," Kloots wrote on Instagram at the time. "My heart is broken as I cannot imagine our lives without him. Nick was such a bright light. He was everyone's friend, loved to listen, help and especially talk."
Now Kloots is trying to move forward. On Wednesday, she kicked off the #ak10daysofhappy challenge, in which she does one thing every day to make herself happy.
On day two, that meant means watching a Christmas movie in July, she wrote on Instagram Stories.