Maksimović's husband died in 1970. Following his death, her poems increasingly began to deal with the topic of human mortality. In 1975, she received a Vuk Karadžić Award for Lifetime Achievement from the SANU, becoming only the second writer to receive the honour, after Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić. The following year, Maksimović published "Letopis Perunovih potomaka" (A Chronicle of Perun's Descendants), a poetry collection dealing with medieval Balkan history. She travelled widely in the 1970s and 1980s, visiting many European nations, including the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, but also Australia, Canada, the United States, and China. Her visits to Norway and Switzerland inspired the poetry collection "Pesme iz Norveške" (Poems from Norway; 1976) and a travel book titled "Snimci iz Švajcarske" (Snapshots from Switzerland; 1978). In 1982, Maksimović became one of the founding members of the Committee for the Protection of Artistic Freedom, which sought an end to government censorship. In 1988, she published a poetry collection titled "Pamtiću sve" (I Shall Remember Everything). She died in Belgrade on 11 February 1993, aged 94.