Author's Bio.

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Mushroom Montoya circumnavigated the globe aboard the USS Trippe DE1075 after killing soldiers, woman and children in Viet Nam. Now, as a shaman, he heals the planet one person at a time. Mushroom Montoya has an active shamanic healing practice in Long Beach, California and he teaches at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Cal State Univ. Long Beach.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

I Can't Get Over It



There is one thing that annoys me 
way down deep inside. 
That is when I hear the words, 
“You need to get over it.” 

How can I get over our dead son? 

There is nothing I can do to bring him back to life. There is no way I can undo his death. My son’s body is gone. We spread his ashes in the ocean. There is no getting over it. 


People who are not in grief, 
who do not have dead children, 
need to understand 
parents grieve for their dead children 
FOREVER.
And forever is a very long time. 


When you see me cry, don’t say to me, “It’s been 25 years since your son died. You need to get over it.” Saying that is cruel. Grief sucks! It hurts. Grief can sneak up and take a burning bite out of my heart without provocation, without warning. I have no control over when or how it shows up.

October is the cruelest month of the year. That is the month in which our son died. That is when grief parks his car in front of our house for a whole month, sometimes longer. I never know when he is going to get out of his car, knock me down and whisper in my ear, “Your son is dead.” But I know that he will and he’ll do it often. The bastard is doing it to me right now as I write this. He is also reminding me that October is only two weeks away.  Grief is mean. Death sucks!


Don’t be cruel by telling me 
I’ve been grieving too long. 
My son’s death has been too long. 
The day he died was the longest day 
of my life. 
His absence is too long, 
not my missing him, 
not my grief. 


When you see me cry, cry with me. When you see me turn down my “happy” glow, sit with me quietly in my darkness. But please don’t tell me to get over it. I can’t.

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Twirling, Slowly Descending White Flares



     Yesterday, just before dark, a cute little four year old girl played in our cul de sac with her dad. They played with a toy that she shot into the air with a large rubber band. It twirled slowly to the ground. As darkness chased away the dusk, the little girl shot her toy into the air and watched it twirl its way slowly back down to the ground.
    While her dad and I chatted, she picked up her toy and shot it into the air again.
     “Look! Daddy! It’s shining.”
     I turned to look, but missed whatever was shining. She picked her toy off the ground and shot it up again. Her dad and I both looked up and watched it descend.
     The twirling toy lit up the area beneath us and sent me back in time to the shores of Viet Nam. For a micro-eternity I was watching the white flares illuminate the jungle to expose the Vietcong. 
     I stopped breathing. Tears flowed. Memories of the choppers, flying back and forth, shooting their machine guns at the exposed enemy fighters, came rushing back. The tracer bullets looked like futuristic death rays coming out of the choppers. I worried that the tracers made it easy for the Vietcong to see where the choppers were. 
     My stomach vibrated to the rhythm of the sound of the choppers, even though the sound was only in my memory. But my body, for that micro-eternity, could not tell whether I was in Long Beach in 2017 or in Viet Nam in 1972.
     Damn PTSD.