After my son died, I went looking for God in the desert

There are times when the soul needs a canyon. A wide, empty space unoffended by rage, uninsulted by tears. What are canyons, anyway, but absences, losses, vast places for pouring out grief? When you see your life as a thing made of holes, you can find a strange solace in the deep ravines and towering mesas of a high-desert landscape. That’s why the haunting canyons of Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico have called to me again in the past year. I’ve needed the no-nonsense, cut-to-the-bone effrontery of a wilderness terrain.

Last January our 40-year-old son, Jon, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. He was a tattoo-covered hunk of a man, working heavy construction, having made his way to sobriety through years of addiction. His wife and daughter loved him to pieces, as everyone did who knew him. Extended rounds of chemo seemed at first to do the job. In August he was declared cancer-free. He rang the bell at the hospital. But two months later the cancer returned with a vengeance. He was dead within a week. “Babu,” my five-year-old granddaughter asked me, “what if Mommy dies like Daddy did? Are you gonna die, too, Babu?”

The months that followed were hard. The onslaught of COVID had been bad enough, keeping us from visiting Jon in the hospital, isolating us from friends. For me, painful prostate surgery interrupted the grieving process still further, followed by rotator cuff repair and a diagnosis of skin cancer a few months later. Old age had suddenly galloped its way into my life. I didn’t sleep well. I couldn’t write. Dark thoughts preyed on the edge of my consciousness. Now and then I found myself peeing on the bathroom rug by mistake. Hafiz would have laughed at the thought of old men just getting old, wandering ever closer to the Beloved’s embrace.