ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — When we lose someone we love, grief is a path lined with friends and family offering their hands, shoulders, ears, thoughts and prayers that often cannot reach beyond our darkness and our numbness, so, at times, it feels our journey is traveled very much alone.

Maureen Cook of Corrales has been on such a journey since September 2016 when her husband, Dave Cook, set off on what was to be a happier journey of his own high into the iconic Maroon Bells in the Elk Mountains near Aspen, Colorado, and never returned.