Emily Page Wettersten

Emily Page Wettersten, 43, of Evergreen, Colorado, passed away at her home while holding her husband’s hand the morning of May 18, 2025. She battled cancer for 10 years, initially breast cancer in 2015, which, after chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation in 2016, returned in 2022, where it had metastasized throughout her bones, organs, and brain.

Born in Wisconsin and raised by two loving parents, Neil and Debbie Gleason/Jabas, she excelled as a pianist, formed life-long friendships, and traveled the world, including a year in Scotland. After graduating from UW Madison, fate took her to Winter Park, Colorado, where, in 2006, she met her future husband, Erik Wettersten.

Married in 2012, Emily and Erik packed a lifetime of outdoor adventure into her all-too-abbreviated existence. They fished, cycled, skied, cooked, hunted, camped, and traveled together whenever possible. Emily developed a love of the sea where she and Erik sailed, dove (as in freediving), and spearfished in over half a dozen different territorial waters of the Western Atlantic and Pacific, with many of those trips occurring even as she actively battled cancer. Meanwhile, as an accomplished artist and photographer, she memorialized their escapades in over two dozen family picture books chronicling their years of adventure. Likewise, her photography has been a frequent addition to the Colorado Outdoors Magazine for the past five years.

Emily also worked as an office manager for Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Elevated Living Real Estate in Evergreen, CO. In this role, her formidable artistic talent was put to great advantage in their marketing presence while her genial positivity made her a cornerstone of the office culture. This office, and her colleagues who work there, are forever her extended family.

Preceded in death by her mother Debbie, her brother Ben, and their beloved labrador Skadi, Emily is survived by her spouse Erik, her father Neil, stepmother Zanne, and her two stepchildren, Cole and Lucy.

As Emily’s cancer metastasized into her brain and elsewhere, her family credits her primary oncologists, Drs. Borges and Fisher, along with their associates at UCHealth/Anschutz, who bought her extra years and additional adventures as she squeezed in a few more ocean trips while simultaneously receiving chemotherapy treatment as recently as February 2025.

Emily will be remembered as an artist, an adventurer, and a vicious card and Scrabble player. Most of all, she will be remembered as a loving partner, a gracious friend, and someone who would stand up for the disadvantaged, uplift anyone she might meet – and occasionally challenge an elderly gentleman to race shopping carts down the aisles at Safeway. Her authentic personality and disarming smile could light up a room even while she might later destroy those same people in a board game. Long on love but short on time, life was her piano, and she gave it a worthy song.

A celebration of Emily’s life will be held later this summer. Instead of flowers, cards, or gifts, please consider being an organ donor so that others may enjoy adventures beyond what fate prescribed. If you feel you want to do more, consider donating to Mount Evans Hospice – who cared for Emily these past several months and down to her final breath; UCHealth medical center who helped keep her alive these past 10 years; or Ducks Unlimited – where Emily has volunteered her time, treasure, and artistic talent for over 16 years.