You were probably married a fairly long time, and now your life is totally different. I understand somewhat, as I got divorced at age 60, and although that's a completely different thing, it was the end of a marriage. The grief involved is nothing like the grief of losing someone to death, which I also know, so again, please accept my condolences.
To answer your questions: Basically, stay in the market.
You need a balanced portfolio that includes stocks, bonds, funds, and so on. If you know or can find a good financial advisor, do so. But first do your own due diligence about that person. You want one who is not doing all the actual investing on his own, but is with a firm that has a track record or affiliated with a broker who will make the actual trades. Essentially, you want to avoid a Bernie Madoff who simply takes your money.
There is no magic age at which you park your money in "safe" investments. The safest thing is to have a mix, and different experts recommend different mixes. Some of it depends on your personal tolerance for risk. If you come from a line of people who live a long time, you absolutely must have some of your money in areas of growth, because inflation can be dreadful.
At 60 you are old enough to recall the downturn in 2008, the dot-com bubble in the late 90's early 2000s, and at least two earlier housing bubbles. Over time, usually in less than ten years, markets and housing recover. Housing bubbles can inflict enormous damage, especially to those who bought near or at the peak. That's the entire underwater thing that meant for a number of people walking away from a home worth less than they owed made sense.
Annuities can be good in that they can give you a guaranteed stream of money for the rest of your life, but you absolutely do NOT want to tie up all your money that way. Part of my money is in two annuities, which were purchased in 2012. I am not yet taking money from either one. I will probably start taking from one in 2022, and the other a couple of years later. Those dates are when the value essentially maxes out on each one. A lot of on-line advice will tell you to steer completely away from annuities. However, they do have their purpose and this is where a trusted advisor can be enormously helpful.
As with any and all investments, make sure you completely understand what you are purchasing or getting into.
Why are you thinking of selling your house? And if you do so, where will you live?
Here's something else you really need to think about: going back to work. If you are only 60, presumably in good health, you'd be better off (in my opinion based on knowing very little about you) that you'd be better off working a few more years. Stop collecting Social Security, let your own account build up, and then resume taking it at or after your full retirement age. You could park your paycheck in an IRA or 401k if offered by the company you go to work for. A Roth IRA would be ideal, because while you'd pay taxes on the money you earn, it would then grow tax-free until you eventually start using that money. And a Roth is not subject to minimum distribution rules.
I can also assure you that there's a degree of myth making out there about people over some age being completely unable to get hired. There are jobs out there, plenty of them, especially if you have basic office skills. I had no trouble getting work over age 60, after my divorce and a relocation to another part of the country. It helped that I didn't have a career. I'd stayed home most of my marriage raising children, and quickly realized that the only way to improve my Social Security payout was to return to work. Which I did. I had several temp or part time jobs, which wound up more than doubling my own Social Security. Oh, and I even turned down a job at age 67, because it was advertised as part time, and my idea of part time is 20 hours a week, they wanted 30. I'd have been hired on the spot had I been willing to work 30 hours a week. But they did wind up taking me on two different times as a temp, and I have very good feelings about that small company.
For really good advice on Social Security, the book Get What's Yours (the revised secrets to maxing out your Social Security) by Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Philip Moeller, and Paul Solman is invaluable. It was through that book that I learned that I could collect a spousal benefit at age 66 (half of what his would be at his full retirement age) and put off collecting my own until age 70 (that birthday is next week) which gives me several hundred dollars a month more. Yay! Of course, as a widow, your situation is very different, and it may not make financial sense to go back to work. But do read the book.
Fearing a crash and selling everything is not a good thing. Keeping at least some money in cash is a good thing. But anyone who got out of the market after Trump was elected, has missed a lot of growth. Again, a variety of good mutual funds and index funds can be a good thing. Day trading, penny stocks, selling short, and other tricky strategies are not for the likes of you and me.
In my opinion you really should have an advisor you can trust. If you know anyone who is invested in the market, ask her if she has an advisor. You could simply walk in to any of the major brokerages (Merrill Lynch is the best known but there are many others out there) and talk to one of their people. Don't commit to anything on that first visit. Make sure you feel comfortable. Go to the local library and do some research. Read some of the financial magazines. Read various books. A librarian can point you in the right direction. Librarians are wonderful, because they know how to get information.
I am not an expert in these things, simply reasonably knowledgeable. There is more than one perfectly good way for you, or anyone else, to invest money. You want to do what you can to learn about several of these, and not invest or sell from fear. One very bad thing about DU is that there are those here who gleefully predict an imminent crash, and have been for years now. I've been here since early on, originally with a different screen name. I went away for a while, then came back as Poindexter. But I've seen the gloom and doom from the beginning. It's especially annoying to me when people post nonsense about the market CRASHING when it's down less than one half of one percent. That's precisely why I started this thread, because no one ever seems to start one on a market rise.
I hope I haven't nattered on too long, and I hope this post has been at least somewhat helpful.
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