The below was written a few years ago, but it feels ok to share it now. As a little background to the events, my mum passed in 1998 after a car accident in the UK. This was obviously a hugely traumatic event for me (the biggest by far), as well as for my dad, sister, the rest of the family, friends and the others involved directly or as witnesses to the accident. The first part of my medicine wheel shamanic training dealt with the past and traumatic events. So this, unsurprisingly, was number one on my list to work upon. Part of the shamanic process is to use a stone to represent the trauma. I won’t go into details as to how that happens, as it is part of the training; however, suffice it to say that the stone became part of my mesa (medicine bundle) and was used in healings with clients. Then, a couple of years after my training had begun, I knew the trauma stone and my work with the tragedy was moving on…
Sunday 29th Sept 2013 – The scene of the accident
I had planned it to happen today and made sure I did not forget by putting the mesa trauma stone in my pocket.
Having spent the weekend with friends who live just outside Ipswich, I was returning home on the A12, just as Mum and Dad had been doing after visiting their friends in August 1998. I’d passed the accident spot many times, where a car had taken off from the oncoming carriageway and collided with Mum and Dad’s car head-on, resulting in Mum passing almost instantly – Dad thinks she died in his arms as he held her in the wreckage – and Dad being badly injured. I had stopped in the same lay-by near the scene a few times to grieve and release, but this time was different.
The mesa stone that had been with me since the South training on the medicine wheel was ready to leave. It had made this known a couple of times recently, by falling out or jumping out of my mesa medicine bundle. The stone, multi-coloured rainbow jasper, had served me well as the ”trauma” stone, representing the car crash, the way its colours mingled with each other, and its use had helped me deal with the tragedy. However, it was time to give it back to Mother Earth and see what final work it had to offer.
I came towards the Witham bypass and the parking area, and, as is often the case, the musical accompaniment was a wonderful gift acknowledging that “they” were there. The song playing as I pulled in was Heatwave’s 80’s soul classic, “Mind-blowing decisions”, which has the line “mind-blowing decisions causes head-on collisions”. I can’t think of any other song that has “head-on collisions” in the lyrics. How prophetic, apt and magical that it is playing as I arrived at the lay-by. I am so used to this kind of coincidence, synchronicity, spirit message (call it what you will), that I wasn’t phased by it at all. I had work to do, I knew that. This was confirmation that the universe was working with me, and maybe God or Spirit was close.
I turned the car stereo off and sat holding the stone in one hand and my mastery stone, received only a couple of weeks ago after completing the Masters Shamanic course with my Shamanic teacher, Skie Hummingbird, in the other hand, and closed my eyes. I allowed my thoughts to flow and put my face into a wailing/keening pose to aid the release until it happened naturally. Images of the car wreckage, Mum in Dad’s arms, a last embrace and thoughts for the others involved in the accident, including the driver of the other vehicle, his wife and children in the back seat, all of whom were not seriously hurt, but have grown up with the accident in their consciousness. My thoughts even turned to those who had witnessed it or helped. They too have it embedded in their psyche. I energetically unwound Mum’s chakras, or body energy centres, and felt her across my lap as Dad had. I felt a group of shamans and tribal folk swaying and slowly moving forward in lines on either side of Mum, who was laid out in the middle, similar to how I saw her at the hospital when I was asked to identify her body. Images came and went. Emotions surfaced and tears flowed.
When it was over, I left the car and walked to the embankment at the side of the lay-by overlooking a freshly ploughed field, startling a rabbit from its resting spot and down a tunnel in the undergrowth. Am I going further down the metaphoric rabbit hole? It felt like it. Ploughed fields always remind me of my pledge to the shamanic path, taken a few years back at the end of the Sacred Trust Darkness Visible retreat in Dorset, by removing my blindfold after three days of darkness next to a ploughed field and taking a step forward, signifying my commitment.
I sat on the bank facing south, out of view of the road and looking over the field. Two crows took off in front of me as I called in the directions N, E, S, W, Mother Earth and Father Sky. More tears. I looked down at the ground between my feet to find a spot to bury the stone, and there I noticed a piece of rusted metal poking out from the earth. I pulled on it quite firmly to shift it, and it came away from the entangled grass and dried mud. Could this be a part of the wreckage from the crash over 15 years ago? As coincidences go, this would be a doozy. One to tell the grandkids! Looking closer at the fragment, I saw some old paint, and yes, it was of the same colour as Mum and Dad’s car, a brown/grey Toyota Corolla. Maybe it was that car, maybe it wasn’t. It didn’t matter. It represented the crash to me. I added a dab of blood from a recent graze on my finger onto the metal and placed the stone under it, to be left here to rest, as its job with myself and Mum was now over.
I spent some time afterwards picking up rubbish that was dotted around the place, and got back in my car and drove off feeling quite blessed. When I turned the stereo on again, the next tune was “Yah Mo B There”, by James Ingram and Michael MacDonald, with the lyric “Heavenly father…just reach out and call his name”. ‘Yah Mo B There’ is a derivation from Hebrew and supposedly translates roughly as “God be with you.”
I like the way the colours match – another synchronicity.
Much love,
Trevor
2016 (revised 2023)
