Dream Time With Dad: Autoethnography as Ritual in the Time of COVID-19

Abstract

The following autoethnography is a death ritual for my father. The ritual enacts my father’s process of artmaking and his request to preserve his story through an act of poiesis. The text constellates themes of generational psychic inheritance, polytheism, and an orientation toward death. These subjects are framed by the larger context of a global pandemic and a health care system under duress. Autoethnography as ritual provides a method for transforming relationships, integrating experiences of death, and honoring the life of the individual.