No one stopped me when I went to his bedside, but I watched as she shook him, while the other men in the room stood by, uncertain of what to do, but not wanting to intervene. Why were they standing there, then? Why not leave my family to their private shameful moment?

“Now close that door and leave the past in there. Walk down a pathway and don’t look back,” Dr. Brauer said.

I heard sniffles all around me, and it went on like this, nearly all of us crying, Dr. Brauer leading us down paths, through doors leading to our personal traumas—through sickness, death, and despair—our sniffles growing louder as we went on our collective journeys.

“Walk down the misty path until you find yourself at another door. Don’t be afraid. Open it.”

I hesitated, but I finally opened a new door. I saw myself driving through flat landscapes. I saw the horizon punctuated with natural-gas flares piped up from the ground where oil was being drilled for. The horizon was full of these tufts of fire shooting into the sky. I saw myself turning off on a ranch road and trying to get closer to the flares. I watched the oil-field workers watch me as I stared at the flares from the side of the road, careful not to cross beyond the NO TRESPASSING sign. From far away the flares looked ethereal, mixing with the stars, but close up they just looked industrial.

Moments later I watched myself driving into a snowstorm through the nothing town of Jal, New Mexico. My heater wasn’t working too well even as I turned it all the way up. I pulled a blanket around my shoulders and saw signs for Loving and Whites City.

In Whites City I asked a stranger to take a picture of me in front of a giant green alien guarding the gift shop. It was snowing, and I had found my jacket in the trunk. I still looked at the picture sometimes, but I don’t remember what I was thinking when it was taken.

Dr. Brauer told us to dig deeper, and a new memory flooded in. I felt cold, and I could hear water dripping. I was in a group of a dozen people, and we were walking single-file, holding lamps, until we reached an open cavern. I knew where we were. The woman leading told us to stop and face her. She told us we were in the darkest part of the cave.

“The only life down here is you and bats. And whatever organisms are in the water dripping down.”

I had gone alone to see the deepest cave in America. We walked past light installations highlighting the most beautiful natural wonders I had ever seen—gypsum chandeliers and lemon-yellow sulfur cave pearls—but I was here to feel total darkness.