Spirit Boundary

Beth Howard

see also Beth’s memoir: Song for a Hard-Hit People; a Memoir of Anti-racist Solidarity from a Coal Miner’s Daughter for more dreams of her father and Appalachia

In my dream, my Dad has just died and I have moved into our old farmhouse where he was living when he died, the home I was raised in. In the dream, I have moved into the farmhouse with my husband and our newborn baby.

(In real life, my Dad died of cancer in 2011. I am married, but I do not have a human baby and do not want a human baby lol. The bank foreclosed on this farm house after my Dad died so I don’t live there and cannot even go back and visit if I wanted to).

Back to the dream: It’s our first night in the house and I am expecting to have to set a boundary because I have learned that up until my Dad’s death he had been inviting people throughout all the nearby hills and hollers in Eastern KY over every night to get drunk and party. Our farm – not inside the house but outside in the yard and farmland– had become a place where people who were lonely, cast aside, struggled with addiction, etc. came to gather and get drunk every night. On our first night in the house, as I expected, people started pulling up as soon as the sun went down and I am prepared. I come outside onto the porch to address everyone and I say something along the lines of “Dad has passed on. I am his daughter. My family and I live here now. We have a new baby. Y’all cannot come here and party every night anymore. You have to go somewhere else now.” I express the boundary kind and firm. No one fights me on it. Everyone nods and seems to understand. Some people share with me a kind word or two about Dad and how he welcomed them in when no one else would. I go speak to a few women and tell them they can stop by sometimes and it wasn’t personal to everyone there, but largely we can’t have this going on at the house anymore because it doesn’t feel safe for us. I explain “I don’t want to come home every night to a bunch of drunk men here at the house, you know?” And they nodded understandingly.

When I wake up the next day and begin to record the dream, I realize all of the people coming over to party are all spirits/dead people.