In October I was contacted by a woman seeking a past life remedy for her husband. He had had treatment for a physical condition but she felt that there was an underlying wound caused by suffocation when buried alive in a previous life and that one of my past life remedies made under moonlight would be beneficial. I told her I was sorry but I did not have a remedy for this specific karmic wound. However, the conversation stayed with me, something about her intensity and earnest desire to help her husband and my desire to help her. The search for a flower remedy for this karmic condition was on.
It became one of those questions that sits in the back of the mind waiting for an answer. A day or so later I became aware of a link between the karmic condition she described and sweet peas. At first it was no more than that, just an intuitive connection. However as I waited for the young moon to wax sufficiently to make the remedy Lunar Sweet Pea a fuller understanding of this intuitive hunch began to fall into place.
Sweet peas had been figuring prominently in our lives of late for it was Heidi's mum's favourite flower and Heidi, with her mum's death fast approaching had grown an impressive bank of Sweet Peas in the garden to take on her regular visits to the hospital.
Less than a month earlier, as we drove up onto Dartmoor so that Heidi could have a good stomp around to release some of her tensions and anxieties, she received the phone call from the hospital to tell her to come sooner rather than later, otherwise it might be too late. We were just getting out of the car at Haytor and I suggested we have a quick walk up to the rocks since we were here anyway.
It was a beautiful day for a walk, even a swift one, and the gorse was in full flower; dotted amongst the vast yellow swathes of flowers were clumps of purple heather. The sun was being filtered through swirling mists producing a soft and ever changing light. At the tor a piper was playing and I requested a lament. As the haunting notes drifted into the wilderness, disappearing into the great open spaces, it was all too beautiful and poignant.
Heidi kissed her mum's cheeks and let her tears fall onto her face. She spoke her last words to her, thanking her for all she had done. I think her mum could hear, it was difficult to tell, she was only 12 hours away from taking her last breath and heavily sedated on morphine. Heidi needed to leave the room to contact her brother and I stayed with her mum, holding her hand and stroking her head.
I looked on at this old woman, now little more than a skeleton, her teeth (something she had been so proud and vain about) falling out of her gums, her mouth open gasping for breath, her tongue all dried out and cracked open. Alone with her in the room I thought of taking one of the pillows from the foot of her bed and putting it over her face to lessen her last hours of suffering. She would not struggle but someone might come in and catch me in the act of murdering her. It was a horrible thought to have but later I was able to see how it fitted into the larger picture.
At the funeral director's Heidi requested he put a tissue in her mum's hand, like she always had and a selection of personal belongings in her favourite handbag to be placed in the coffin. One thing that was joked about but not included was a mobile phone because her mother had always been scared of being buried alive.
I like visiting her mum's grave, it is a beautiful spot overlooking the Teign estuary. I sit on the ground next to the grave, pick up clumps of the red clay and crumble them in my hand. We will continue placing the sweet peas on her grave at each visit, until the autumn frosts kill them off.
Lunar Sweet Pea is for souls who in a previous life have been buried alive or have died through suffocation.
