This Thin Veil Between Us

By Eunice Boeve

As a child, Eunice Boeve experienced the first sign of her extrasensory perception in a premonition of her father's death. The night he passed, she sensed invisible people in the room and believed they had killed him. The experience eventually slipped into her subconscious memory as unresolved grief, mani

• Language: English
• Publisher: Koehler Books
• Release date: Oct 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888241189

Eunice Boeve

Eunice Boeve has authored nine historical fiction books, articles for Montana Magazine, and children's stories for various publications and organizations. Her books have won recognition by the Kansas Author's Coffin Award, Kansas Reading Circle Books, Kansas Notable Books, and the governor of Kansas. In 2016, she received local recognition for her writing and was named Fort Bissell person of the year.A stay-at-home parent while her children were young, she then worked as a speech paraprofessional in a school for special needs children and then in the family funeral home. She started a library based around the subject of death and dying at the funeral home and helped bereaved families and individuals choose books that best suited their needs. She retired with her husband in 1999.

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INTRODUCTION

I believe death simply means we are no longer earth dwellers. We are still alive, we’ve just changed our place of residence, and as Shakespeare’s Hamlet put it, we have shuffled off this mortal coil—this human body—which in our new home would just be a drag. I also believe that our loved ones who have passed never really leave us, that they are still with us, still cognizant of our continued journey through life and will be there to greet us when we, too, have shuffled off this mortal coil.

I also believe that those who have passed, as well as God, Jesus, and angels, can and do reach out to us from time to time. I have been so blessed over the years to have experienced this, but I would never ever have imagined how prolific a loved one could be until my husband of sixty-two years, my love, my Ron passed from this life on January 25, 2018, and began to make contact in an astounding number and variety of ways—all of which eventually led me to writing this book.

This book is a memoir that begins when I was five and had my first remembered premonition—a sudden frightening knowledge that my daddy was soon to leave us. That premonition was the catalyst that led to me having panic attacks and fainting spells for forty-three more years. Then an out-of-body experience set me free, and what had been a curse became a gift—a blessing that in later years let me see my mother for a few seconds, standing before me in solid form, smiling with love and pride in her eyes. Because of this blessing, my brother Danny could send me a vision of his passing in the company of our parents, and of course Ron’s almost continued contact with me that has left no doubt but that there is an afterlife. Well, when he’s not here working on me to write this book. This was his idea, and he was the driving force behind it. I call him my ghostwriter.

Years ago I began collecting stories from others whose experiences testify to the existence of life after what we call death, as well as evidence that God, Jesus, and angels also pierce this thin veil between us. Some of those stories are in the memoir, the others are in the epilogue. In all the stories, except those in Ron’s and my immediate family, if I use a name, it is only a first name and fictional at that. There are some who contributed their stories that requested I use their true first names. A few who shared their stories with me did not want their story or stories told at all, even if fictionalized, and of course, I honored their request.

My hope is that this memoir and the added stories in the epilogue will bring comfort to those who have lost loved ones and give additional confirmation to those who believe or know without question that life continues after death. I also hope that for those who do not believe in life after death or are skeptics, this book will at least cause them to consider the possibility. I’m very guilty of not having shared experiences in the past. I, like many others, was afraid I’d be considered, at best, a little odd. Now, with Ron’s continued encouragement, I have no such doubts. Perhaps my sharing through this book will free others to share with friends and family, and even strangers, thus spreading the word that although such stories cannot yet be proven scientifically, they do give an abundance of anecdotal evidence that there is only a thin veil between us earthbound and those who now reside in the world of the afterlife.

CHAPTER 1

DADDY’S MUSTACHE

Memories of my father are few, most remembered now in small flashback scenes of the five and a half years I knew him. The most detailed and longest memory is of an afternoon in late summer or early fall in 1942, when he decided to shave off his big gray mustache. That afternoon we were all gathered around to watch the event, smiling, happy, for we all knew our daddy would entertain us in the process.

In those days we lived in northwest Montana’s forested country of mountains and hills, lakes and rivers and streams. Logging country, but also a country of farms and ranches. Our father was neither rancher, farmer, nor logger. He had cowboyed across the west in his earlier years, but now settled in one place with a family to support, he operated his own string of pack horses for the US Forest Service. He rode those mountain trails, leading his pack string loaded with supplies for lookouts, trail crews, and fire camps and was often gone for days at a time. He also worked for the local fish hatchery and in winter followed a trap line. His name was Harry Goyen.

Dad and Mom purchased our home on Libby Creek, south of the town of Libby, in May of 1937 for seventy-five dollars from a couple named Staley when I was a month old. Those forty acres, complete with a small, four-roomed wood-sided house, a barn, woodshed and other outbuildings, had once been a stage stop on the old original road. Now Highway 2, that old road came south out of Libby for seven miles, then it turned east and, a mile farther on crossed Libby Creek on a wide wood planked bridge. The road then passed by that old stage stop we’d one day call home and on up a long winding hill, called Trainer Hill. From there it continued on toward Kalispell and other towns along the way. A man named C.M. Doty lived at the top of Trainer Hill and in those winter months of deep snow, when motors began to replace horses, he and his team were often called on to pull those stalled vehicles up that last steep grade. That old road was rerouted in 1934 to continue on south and east, bypassing Libby Creek and Trainer Hill and two years later, flood waters washed away that wide, wood-planked bridge.

I remember the old Doty cabin. It had been abandoned for years and by the time we came along, what had once been the door and a couple of windows, were just openings in those log walls. We often played in that old cabin, although one day we encountered a black bear inside, so we played elsewhere that day.

The logging industry began in the area in the late 1800s, cutting down the trees that had grown there for centuries. In the 1920s, that flat between Libby Creek and Trainer Hill, where we’d one day live, was a railroad camp for the logging company. The families lived in house-like train cars that were moved from camp to camp on flat cars. In those early days, the logs were sent sliding down the mountains on long wooden chutes, and in those first years, hauled to the mill by teams of four to six horses. Eventually, the lumber company replaced the horses with a train to haul the logs. The train tracks were gone by the time we moved there, but the old trestle over a deep ravine just northeast of our house was still there and great fun for us kids to play on.

That small brown four-room house, that old stage stop, was a happy home in those years before our dad passed on that winter night in 1943. The three older kids have the most memories and recall our dad as a hands-on father who might entertain them with a story, coax our mother out into the dusk of evening to play hide and seek with them and, in other ways create happy memories. Margaret, who was a tiny child and not much bigger when grown-up, remembers Dad swimming in the creek with her on his back, her little arms clasped around his neck. Some of Earl’s fond memories were going with Dad on some of his packing trips with supplies for lookouts and trail crews. Mabel told me that she and Earl and Margaret were assigned a part of the garden to weed, comparable to their size and age, the job to be done by Sunday. One Sunday, we’d been invited to dinner at our aunt and uncle’s and Mabel’s part of the garden still sprouted weeds. Her punishment was to stay home and pull those weeds, but Dad stayed home and helped her. I wonder if having our dad all to herself that day, was even more of a treat than that Sunday dinner would have been.

Those three older ones have many more memories of our father, while the three younger ones, Larry, Danny, and June have none. I, who was five when he passed, have a few, including the day he shaved off his mustache and I had my first remembered premonition—a terrifying glimpse into the future that froze me to my chair. Then Daddy squatted beside me and whispered a plan to play a trick on my mother and my fear soon changed to joy.

Why our daddy decided to shave off his mustache that afternoon has passed with him. Now, with TV and other forms of entertainment, one might consider the shaving of a mustache hardly worthy of an audience, but this wasn’t just getting rid of some whiskers, for this man was a born showman who would entertain us in the process. Besides, we were just kids. We had no other kids to play with and we loved our daddy.

That day in late summer or early fall of 1942, we had all gathered in a corner of the kitchen, for without plumbing of any kind, it was where we washed our hands and faces in an enamel wash basin that set on a wooden washstand, and where Daddy shaved his cheeks and chin, but not his big gray mustache—until that day. I remember how the slanting rays of the afternoon sun shone through the screened-in porch that afternoon, splashing its golden rays of light across the threshold of the open kitchen door. I remember the warmth of being a part of a whole: the smiles, the grins, the anticipation of the show that was about to begin. My older siblings must have pulled over the kitchen chairs, for I remember sitting on one. Although we were all gathered around to watch our daddy, my memory has not retained a clear vision of my siblings. I’m sure my focus was on Daddy, the star of the show. I also remember my mother standing behind us, holding baby June in her arms. At thirty-nine, her blond hair may have been threaded with a few strands of gray, from a gene passed down on her mother’s side that causes one to gray early. I didn’t know that then, of course, or that I also carried the gene. Her name was Hazel, née Cline.

We were a family of nine. My three brothers were: Earl, fourteen, Larry, three, and Danny, nearly two. My three sisters were: Mabel, twelve, Margaret ten, and baby June, just a few months old. I was, at five, the exact middle child.

I sat on that kitchen chair, bare feet dangling, a sun-browned towhead in a cotton dress, likely a faded hand-me-down from my two older sisters, and I, like my mother and my siblings, watched this man we all adored, our faces lit with smiles.

I don’t remember the details of how our daddy used that simple act of shaving off his mustache to create his one-man show. I just know we weren’t disappointed, for I remember the smiles, the laughter that permeated our sunlit kitchen that afternoon.

Perhaps, our daddy first peered into the mirror that hung on the wall above the wash basin at his full gray mustache, the only evidence of his fifty-five years, his hair still dark, his body slender. I doubt if I ever saw my reflection in that mirror as a young child, but a few times I may have seen my small face in my mother’s hand-held mirror. It had been a set, with a matching hairbrush and comb. I have the mirror now, but the brush and comb are long gone.

Few pictures were taken of us in our growing-up years. I had my first and only—until my teenage years—taken in 1939 or ’40, so I was two or three. Uncle Charley, Dad’s brother, was visiting from Wyoming. I remember being told that he had come to persuade Dad to move back and work on this ranch where he was the foreman and co-owner. Dad declined for whatever reason. I think of how, if he’d said yes and we had moved to Wyoming, I’d never have met my Ron and I would not now be writing this book. In fact, we would all have lived different lives. That day, Mom took two group pictures of Dad and his brother with my three older siblings and me. Our little brother Larry was a baby and napping, so he missed being in the pictures, something he regrets, as I would have too. In those photos, our father has that large gray mustache he shaved off that sunny afternoon.

I have no memory of how he entertained us. Maybe, after he used Mother’s scissors to clip the extra hair from his mustache, he offered to give my two older sisters haircuts that would have no need for comb or brush, and only a quick dip to be clean. If so, they would have shrunk back, laughing, shaking their heads as he advanced, scissors in hand, their hands flying up to protect their hair.

I imagine he teased some more before turning back to the process of shaving. Mixing a little water with the soap in his shaving mug, he worked his shaving brush around and around until the bristles were soft and foamy. Perhaps then, he reached out with the brush and dabbed a spot of foam on his youngest son’s nose. His other small son, dark eyes sparkling, knowing he was next, shrinking back, laughing when Daddy turned to him, and the dab of white soap landed elsewhere, maybe on his chin.

Now Daddy may have told a joke or a small, funny story, for he was a storyteller. Then, turning back to the mirror, he brushed the white foam on those remaining hairs and using the long blade of his straight razor shaved off the last of his once full, gray mustache.

I don’t remember how he showed off his new look. Perhaps he turned with a sweeping bow to accept accolades from his audience, but all I remember as he turned toward us, my laughter ready to bubble out, was a sudden jolt of cold fear.

Although I will never know this side of Heaven what I saw or heard that day that so frightened me. All I know was in some way, maybe a voice, maybe a vision, I knew this man we so loved and who gave so freely of his love for us, was soon to be gone from our lives—maybe not how or when, but somehow I knew, and I was terrified. Over the years, I’d have other premonitions, not many, but some, although thankfully, none so terrifying.

The rest of the kids scattered after the show, but I sat stiff and still on that kitchen chair, my whole being filled with fear. Then Daddy squatted beside me and whispered a joke to play on my mother.

Of course, he would have had no idea as to what had frightened me. I imagine he thought it was seeing him without the mustache. Soon I would not remember either, for in that time of pure delight, I would lose, for forty-three years, all conscious memory of that horribly frightening premonition.

I don’t know when that fear left me that afternoon. Perhaps it vanished at the sight of his smiling face, the twinkle in his dark brown eyes and his whispered words about playing a joke on my mother. Or maybe when he lifted me from the chair and we hurried off to the girls’ bedroom, where at night I slept between my two big sisters and where Mother kept a wardrobe of clothes for her and Daddy. Perhaps it was when he sat me down on the bed and turned and pulled a dress of Mother’s from that wardrobe and slipped it on, his pants legs and boots showing below the hemline. I remember the giggles spilling out of me and of falling over backward on the bed and rolling over to sit back up, still laughing. I think then, if any memory of whatever had so terrified me remained, it was swallowed up in those giggles of pure delight.

Now, with one of Mother’s scarves covering his dark hair and another over my blond curls, he lifted me up and put me through the open bedroom window and set me feet first down on the ground below and climbed out after me. We sneaked around the house, two conspirators, hand in hand, hunched low, seeking our prey.

At the door of the screened-in porch off the kitchen, I imagine Daddy grinned at me as he raised his hand and knocked on the wooden edge of the screen door.

Mother stepped out onto the porch and came to greet us, looking at us as if we were indeed strangers. Now my siblings had gathered around, some standing outside a few feet away, the rest following our mother out on the porch. I imagine they all grinned at seeing our daddy dressed as he was, but I was entranced, filled completely with pure joy.

The gist of Daddy’s story was that he was a widowed lady with this sweet, precious child to raise and could our mother give him a job. I wiggled and giggled as he spoke those words of woe and in that small span of time I’d become not the middle child, one of seven, but the only child, the most beloved.

Years later, I will note the irony of that happy time, for on a January night a few months later, it would be our mother who would be left to raise alone not just one child, but seven.

CHAPTER 2

THE PEOPLE

We had gathered in the living room the evening of January 6, 1943, as we always did on winter evenings after supper, the fire dying out in the kitchen stove. Our mother, Earl, and Mabel back from doing the chores, were now in the living room, their caps and coats hanging along the west wall in the kitchen. Margaret had stayed inside to tend to us small ones, especially baby June. Larry and Danny and I probably played on the floor with a few toys. Our daddy, who had not felt well for some time, lay in his and Mother’s bed. With the two bedrooms occupied, one by the boys, the other by us girls, our parents’ bed was in the southeast corner of the living room.

Darkness comes early to Montana in winter, and the kerosene lamp on the table in the living room gave us light as we settled in for the evening. The heating stove, filled with chunks of wood, gave off its welcoming warmth, and outside the temperature dropped and the snow covering the fields and hills cast a deep silence over the land.

Before our daddy took sick, winter evenings had been warm and cozy. Daddy might tell us a story or join my three older siblings in a game of cards or checkers. Maybe he held one or both little boys on his lap. I probably played with a doll. Mother might be tending to the baby or reading one of the many books she checked out of the library, or re-reading one from her own small collection—among them, perhaps, a book of poems, for she loved poetry and could recite many by heart. Sometimes our mother and daddy talked and smiled and laughed together. I liked how they looked at each other then, for it filled me with a comforting happiness.

Those evenings of the last days of our father’s life had to have been more subdued—without laughter, our faces solemn—our mother tending to Daddy, soothing him with cool washcloths on his forehead and medicine to quiet his coughs. Our older brother Earl may have quietly entertained Larry, the oldest little boy, while Margaret took care of Danny. Mabel may have tended to little June, now six months old. I do not know if there was some degree of anxiety in those older siblings that night. I wonder now if they were worried about Daddy, or believed he’d get better and soon be up and around again, the fever, the chills, the aches, gone. But, if so, it was not to be. He would pass in the early morning hours while we were sleeping.

I was surely growing sleepy by the time Daddy began to speak in soft mumbled words, his eyes open and looking as if he were seeing someone I could not see. Then I sensed the presence of others, and I looked around the room, but no one was there—just us. I looked to the windows, and I thought they must be there, outside in the snow, looking in at us, and I was afraid.

My eyes kept wanting to look up at the windows, but fear kept my head down, my eyes on my doll. Sometimes, I looked up at my mother for reassurance—of what, I’m not sure. Maybe that it was okay for those people to be there outside in the snow—at the windows. But her eyes were always on Daddy.

Our daddy was an outdoors man and did not like curtains at the windows. He said they hid his view of the outdoors. We had but few neighbors, the closest, a mile or so away, so curtains weren’t really needed, although after Daddy was gone, our mother hung them at all the windows.

That night I clutched my doll tighter, wanting to tell my mother about the people—wanting her to hang blankets over those blank, dark panes of glass—wanting to tell her that I was afraid of the people, but the words would not come.

Of course, I didn’t know then, nor would I know for years about the dying sometimes seeming to see loved ones who had already passed, some believing it was true, others that the dying one was just hallucinating.

I don’t remember being worried or afraid of the people when we went to bed that night. Maybe, knowing I had sensed them, they had backed off, so I’d not be afraid and waited to come for him while we were sleeping. I slept between my two big sisters. Our mother warmed our beds on winter nights with the heavy flat irons she used to smooth the wrinkles from our clothes. Heated on the stove, wrapped in old rags, and tucked down by our feet, they helped chase away the chill.

Years later I asked my sister, Mabel, who had been twelve at the time, if she remembered Daddy talking as if others were in the room or maybe outside looking in the window. I didn’t tell her that I’d sensed the people that night. I told her I had imagined there were people outside in the snow looking in at us and I had wanted Mom to hang blankets at the window, but I’d been too scared to ask. Mabel did not remember our dad talking as if to some invisible beings. He had mumbled some, she knew, but he most likely had a fever.

I don’t know when our daddy took sick, but I remember being worried about him on Christmas Day. I don’t remember what I got for Christmas that year, but Larry and Danny got toy pistols. What I remember is our daddy getting really cross with them for pointing their guns at each other. He told them you never pointed a gun at another person unless you intended to shoot them. That he seemed so upset with both little boys had disturbed me.

My Daddy had looked so tired that Christmas Day. I remember he wore something like a robe, probably a light blanket or shawl, for I can’t imagine he ever owned a bathrobe. But that covering draped about him was out of the ordinary and that also bothered me.

I think it was shortly after Christmas that our daddy began to be in bed all day. On one of those days, he got up and dressed and came into the kitchen. Mother had made my two little brothers and me a bowl of uncooked sage dressing and had set the bowl on the seat of a kitchen chair. We three were standing by the chair, spooning the tasty, flavored bread into our little mouths when Daddy came into the room. He told Mother he was tired of being cooped up inside and was going outside for some fresh air. She pleaded with him not to go, but he brushed aside her concerns and, taking his coat and gray felt cowboy hat from the hook by the door, went out in the cold of that winter day.

Sometime after Daddy passed, we got a telephone. It hung on the wall in the living room. To dial a number, one turned the crank on the side. The numbers were a variety of long and short cranks. I don’t remember ours, but a number might be one long—a vigorous continuous turning of the crank several times—and two shorts—two quick turns of the crank. The phones rang in every home on that party line, as it was called, and others on that line might listen in at times. One day my mother was on the telephone with her sister, our Aunt Teddie, and I heard her say she believed that our daddy going out that cold winter day had led to his death.

Aunt Teddie, her husband, and their two sons were our only relatives in Montana. We called her Aunt Teddie, although her name was Zella. Her husband we simply called by his first name Blaze, without prefacing it with Uncle. Their two sons, John and Bill, were twenty-three and sixteen that winter of 1943 when our father passed from this world.

Dad’s parents had died years before I was born, and I knew little about them. I was somewhere in my forties when I joined our town’s local genealogical society to find out about my dad’s ancestors. I knew he had been born in Pratt County, Kansas, and the first time I came to a meeting I told them with a grin that I’d joined because of this one strange connection I had with my dad. He was born in Kansas and died in Montana, whereas I was born in Montana, and it looked like I’d probably die here in Kansas. As a member of our local group of family-tree builders, I started searching for members of dad’s family. Luckily one cousin was also researching the family history.

Along with the genealogical data, that cousin also sent a copy of a letter written in 1879 by my dad’s grandmother. The letter was to Dad’s mother, telling her that her father had passed. He had been injured while working with a horse in the barn and had passed a few days later. This is a quote from the letter: A little while before he passed, he said, Someone is coming, and I must go. Then with his last breath, he said, Glory! I’m sure my dad’s grandfather was seeing deceased loved ones from the spirit world, those people my daddy had talked to and who I thought stood outside in the snow. Although at that time, I no longer had conscious memory of the people. That memory had slipped into my subconscious when a woman was run over at our school when I was in the second grade. I would not regain conscious memory of them until I’d have an out-of-body experience when I was forty-eight years old.

I believe that the someone Great-Granddad had seen were passed loved ones who had come for him. And the word, Glory! was a glimpse of Heaven as he left this earth. I thought it was interesting that Great-Grandmother wrote of that as a fact, and didn’t preface it with such words as, he must have been hallucinating. Many do believe we go to Heaven, but to be able to return to earth, even just briefly to escort a dying loved one into the next life, might for some be a bit of a stretch.

There are many stories that lend credence to what many believe, me included, that we do not die alone but pass in the company of those who have gone before. Sometimes the dying, especially children, will speak of Jesus being at their bedside a little while before they pass. I’m sure there are many such stories, but few speak of them outside of the family, if even then. The following are some of those stories I’ve collected from family, acquaintances,