Welcome to Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.

The boy was gone.

Death had come for the baby, sudden and remorseless.

All the hopes and desires and celebrations of fatherhood and the family's future were

smashed in one searing moment of pain that went on and on and on.

It was the fear of every parent that something would happen to their beloved child, and

this was his first born son that he had lost, at just six months old.

His faith taught him that suffering like this was a kind of mystery.

It had guided him this far, but faced with so much loss he could only ask, in a world

governed by justice, how could his baby boy be taken from him this way?

It was a terrible and costly question burning its way into his heart, the rhythms and responsibilities

of his life and the teachings and traditions of his youth.

They offered no answers.

Blind with pain and grief and loss, he set out from home.

He left his devastated wife behind and he took to the road.

He went looking for answers.

He traveled by foot.

The questions would have plagued him for the weeks that it took to reach up into the

Euro-Mountains, that stone spined that split the Russian Empire in two.

He followed roads and tracks that stretched higher and higher for more than 300 miles.

But he wasn't lost.

He knew where he was going.

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