A visceral remembering of a passed life’s death.
Pushing the aged pitchfork into the sun-hardened earth was a real slog. The years of growth in the metre high Crucifix orchids had taken its toll, on this large overgrown island garden bed.
Our new home, our 2.5 acre “heaven on our Earth” was cluttered and tired.
We knew we had a huge task ahead of us.
Today, I had planned to tackle clearing this small part of the large garden bed. Not to overwhelm myself but to fill the empty green waste bin before the garbage truck arrived around 8:30 am. The day was already warming up, on this mid-December morning.
I was excitedly visualising this completed garden bed – tropical and lush with a cleared meditation space paved in the centre of the large, rounded end where our driveway circled around it. Sweat already running down my forehead, I continued to push down hard with my foot onto the top of the weathered steel pitchfork, then levering it back and forth with my full arm stretch.
The 32-year-old weathered pitchfork (yes, I know its’ age, being one of the first garden tools we bought as new home owners back in the day) and I had sunk into a soothing rhythm together…. back and forth, back and forth. The faded, hard plastic handle had become very brittle with age.
The green waste wheelie bin had begun to fill, and the sun was climbing in the sky.
My family had all left for work for the day.
The garden, thick with weeds, long tufty grass and orange Crucifix orchids was edged by rough cut basalt rocks. I landed my next dig with the fork. This time I had bit something hard underground and I pushed the pitchfork forwards with my full force.
Time stood still in that moment. No sound. I felt the world stop.
The handle had broken off and the rusty broken steel shaft came crashing towards my chest, higher than my heart, thumping me with such force I stumbled backwards in shock. Deep inside of me my body remembered this force from long, long ago. I could hear myself wailing loudly.
I could hear myself asking …..Who is that? Whose voice is that? It felt somehow familiar.
Was this my voice I can hear? My mind swirled, grasping at the sounds.
The shock thumped through me as I took stock of what had just happened in that moment. My body’s knowing had a sense of all my energy bodies and cell memories in that moment. My mind reeled with all kinds of familiar feeling visions. This was visceral.
What had just hit me? My mind continued to scramble for an answer while my chest felt like it had just caved in. The pain had not hit but ……………
My hands tenderly reached my chest. I could now feel a sweaty sting. There was no blood and no bones sticking out. The numbness that had overtaken me for what felt like hours, was astounding.
I sunk to the hot stony driveway and found the garden edge to sit down on. I took a breath and the pain began to wrack my upper body. I had a sense that my chest had been hammered but more vividly than that physical pain I was now overcome with feelings of betrayal, abandonment and being totally alone. This was very confusing to me in that moment.
I made my way into the house and found an icepack and wrapped it in a soft teatowel that was left on the bench. By now I was sobbing loudly again as the cold began to enter my body.
My heart cried out for myself. My mind raced and my chest pounded.
I went to the bathroom mirror to see the large crimson swollen welt above my high heart area. Chunks of skin from the rusty, broken edge of the fork, now bleeding.
Is anything broken? I checked in as the pain was now in my back and my arms hurt. My wailing may have woken the dead. I remembered I was at home alone.
My knowing had me lay down on our bed and rubbing an essential oil Helichrysum, tenderly onto the area. Yes, it stung the open skin, and I dropped a couple of drops of Frankincense under my tongue to help me ground and calm with every piece of information coming into my awareness.
Memories began to literally flood into my mind. Confusion blended with the physical pain in my chest had me swirling and wondering. Through my closed eyes I could feel myself floating on the ocean in another time and another place long ago. This was another lifetime that I was connecting with through the raw and intense pain in my chest. I was getting a sense of a body memory of being in freezing water.
I could feel my long hair floating all around my head as I felt the freezing, salt water enter my lungs I could feel myself in 2 places here in December of 2019 having been smacked in the upper chest by a broken off pitch fork handle and I was also having the every real body memory of being smashed open through my chest by a Viking hammer.
The sounds of battle muffled now under the water. My tears streaming and voice wailing in pain and at feeling the very real memory of my lifeforce beginning to drain from me at the same time.
