A woman who received a heart transplant has buried her old vital organ under a tree in an emotional ceremony.
Israeli artist Sharon Fidel, 46, had a cardiac arrest in 2016 after suffering from heart problems for more than a decade after becoming pregnant with her daughter.
She urgently needed a donor for a transplant and eventually received one three months ago, when the family of a 16-year-old fatal traffic accident victim agreed for his heart to be donated.
When Ms Fidel recovered, she decided to drive out to a remote area and bury her heart.
To mark the occasion, she played music from the hit US show ‘The Love Boat’ and captured the strange but emotional ceremony on video.
At the start of the video she puts on a pair of latex gloves and takes her old heart, which is in a white plastic bucket, out of the back of her car.
She explains that her heart was being kept in the pathology department of a hospital for research purposes.
Ms Fidel then walks through some trees and begins digging a hole for the heart before finally taking it out of the bucket, which takes her several attempts as her hands are trembling.
Sharon Fidel had a history of heart problems and received a donation from a 16-year-old traffic accident victim
Fidel takes the heart out of the back of her car after driving to the wilderness at the start of the ceremony
The 46-year-old artist then takes the heart for its burial underneath a tree
She then begins to dig the ‘grave’ for the heart which was being held in a hospital for research
After a few attempts because her hands were shaking she manages to lay her heart to rest
Her hands still shaking, she puts the heart into the hole and next she can be seen standing over the ‘grave’ staring at the camera.
At the end of the video she kneels down at the side of the hole, takes off her wig and begins to sob.
‘Everything is authentic in the film, and I trembled when I put the heart into the ground,’ she told Haaretz.
‘I believe that, additionally, the excitement and fear of attempting to really touch the organ and pick it up – all those things caused the trembling. It was very scary.’
At the end of the video she is on her knees sobbing with emotion for her old heart after taking her wig off