I have decided to pursue a death with dignity (muerte digna) here in Colombia. If current plans hold, I expect to remain alive for weeks, not months. I will not be returning to the US again in this corporeal body.

There. No more coded messages. No more vaguebooking around one of the largest, most complex and final decisions of my life. For months I have been telling people that Michael and I are trying to go home. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is that we are no longer planning to go home in the same way.

I can imagine what some of you are going to think, because I have spent most of my life in the same culture you have. What the hell, Jon? What are you thinking?! Reasonable questions, and the first thing you need to know is that the path to this decision did not begin last week.

In December 2021, years before we moved to Colombia and years before this pain took over my life, I was publicly writing in support of a basic human right: humane end-of-life choices. In February 2025, I was already talking about the last chapters of our lives and what choices might remain to us. In May of this year, I sat in front of my camera on YouTube, twice, and documented my personal stream of consciousness, talking explicitly about choosing my own end of life if I was unable to evict the pain that had seized control of my corporeal vehicle in this life.

I said then that I still had plenty of life force. I also said that having such a strong life force did not necessarily mean I was willing to endure everything health and aging might still have waiting for me. I wanted as much control as possible over how and when I eventually passed on from this mortal existence.

I also made something else very clear: life is not static. I reserved the right to change my mind, and I still do. One can’t change plans if one never makes plans.

When an idea becomes your life

For most of my life, death with dignity, in its many forms and manifestations, was something I supported intellectually. Sure. Give people the right to choose their own manner and timing of death. If someone is dying horribly from cancer or AIDS, why should we require them to experience every last indignity before we finally say, Thank gawd their suffering is over? I would have voted for it. I might have written something supportive about it. Then I might have gone to lunch, feeling good about my progressive stance.

It is remarkably easy to support a human right when you don’t actually need it for yourself. Eventually the question stopped being whether people should have the right to decide when enough is enough. It became: Jon, how much is too much for you to carry?

What quality of life is acceptable to you and how do you measure it? How much pain, how much medication, how many more procedures? How much of your day are you willing to spend sleeping in an opioid fog because the medications that make life tolerable also make consciousness optional? Do you have to wait until you’re bedridden or incontinent, or until somebody else decides your suffering looks sufficiently horrifying?

Who gets to decide when your life no longer meets your own minimum standard for living it? Those questions aren’t philosophical anymore. They are personal and they are mine.

And then there is Colombia

This is one of those stories in which Colombia turned out to be nothing like the country I thought I was beginning to understand. It started manifesting its peculiar form of magic, for lack of a better term. Its Constitutional Court has recognized a human right to die with dignity. Since a 2021 ruling, access to euthanasia has not been limited to people with a terminal diagnosis. The ruling covers a physician acting with the patient’s free and informed consent when the patient experiences intense physical or psychological suffering from bodily injury or a serious and incurable illness. (Sentencia C-233/21.)

I had known some of this for years. Knowing a right is legally recognized and learning that it might actually apply to your own circumstances are very different experiences. For months now I have been trying to answer that question for myself. Is this real? Is it available to me? Is my suffering the kind that Colombia recognizes? Can I find medical people willing to talk to me about my options? At times I gave up on the process entirely.

Now, after months of uncertainty, I have good reason to believe there is a legal medical path available to me. There are still some medical and practical details to settle, including the date and location. With this post I am telling you and the rest of the world my present intention, not announcing that every step has already been completed.

Why not wait?

This may be the hardest part for some people to understand. Why not wait until January? Why not get through Christmas, wait another six months, see if something else works? Trust me, I’ve asked myself those questions too. I do not approach this decision flippantly.

I have had medical procedures that have successfully helped to relieve the pain, but they are the exception. One gave me several glorious weeks in February when I was able to walk freely and confidently again. In fact, that was the last time I had what I would consider functional mobility.

I have had moments when the pain disappeared completely. In May I sat with Michael on our balcony and announced that, at that exact moment, I was pain-free. It lasted minutes.

That’s part of what makes this decision so difficult. I would be far more suspicious if anything about this were easy. Right now, I am not spending every moment lying in bed screaming in agony.

The price for this freedom from disabling pain is high. I took a hydrocodone an hour ago and now I can barely keep my eyes open, even though I’ve already slept more than six hours since supper last night. Yesterday I woke up so gorked out from the three-drug pain pill cocktail that finally works for me that when I thought I was sitting down securely in my office chair, my butt just kept helplessly sliding out of the special cushioned seat until I landed hard on the concrete floor. Directly onto my right hip, the epicenter of the pain that I am trying to control.

Apart from a day or two of relief with IV drugs in the hospital around surgery, I now can’t walk a block without triggering crippling pain that screams FALL RISK. I certainly can’t dance.

I can still laugh sometimes. I can write, or at least dictate this story. Michael and I can go outside and take a photograph in which we look perfectly happy. We are happy sometimes. There should be no rule against dying just because you can still find reason to smile or laugh with friends.

The alternative I increasingly fear is just waiting and hoping that I’ll be spared another crisis that will make the choice for me. These acute pain episodes can flare suddenly. Travel is already difficult, and if this final life adventure requires going to Bogotá, I don’t want to discover that I waited until my body can barely make the trip. Michael is 75. His health does not come with guarantees either.

There are a thousand things that could happen while I am waiting and the odds are against any of them being positive. My condition is well established, progressive and chronic. There is also a difference between changing my mind and stalling just because the decision might be hard. I am trying to understand where that line is for me, so try to be patient with me if you don’t understand it either.

This is hard

Please don’t confuse determination with ease. This is fucking hard. Michael and I have been together more than 45 years. How exactly does one prepare to knowingly end that? How does Michael prepare to wake up in a world in which I am suddenly an archived memory? How do I prepare him for bank accounts and passwords and computers and documents and all the stupid little things I have always handled for us until now?

How does one grieve someone while he’s sitting beside you? How does the person who is leaving grieve? Because I am grieving too. I don’t want people to imagine that choosing to end my life this way means I have somehow stopped loving my life.

I have had an astonishingly fulfilling life. I am a survivor. I have survived epidemics, pandemics and psychological warfare—things I didn’t expect to have to experience. I have loved people and I have pissed people off. I came out of the closet, and I have come out again.

I have been born again. And again. And again. I had adventures I had no business having. I fell in love with Colombia and I misunderstood Colombia. I learned from people here whose stories I am still trying to write.

I still have stories to tell. I still want to change the world. That hasn’t disappeared. If anything, the clock suddenly makes those things feel more important to me than ever. I no longer feel I have time to spend in denial myself.

Relief is not normalcy

Since I accepted this option, my life has taken a turn. I welcome the relief, strange as that may sound. I have made a decision about my life, which also happens to involve my death. It’s weird as fuck, but it also feels right. For me.

It would be easy to confuse that relief with normalcy. Michael and I are having conversations I never imagined having. I feel an obligation to make the best use of the relatively short amount of time I may have left, to write, to finish projects, to prepare Michael as well as I can and to spend as much time as possible with people I love. These don’t feel like ordinary weeks.

Every time I tell someone what I intend to do, there is apprehension. Even now, I suffer a fear of rejection. Will they think I have lost my mind? Will they become angry or disappear?

There have been a few reactions that feel like denial to me. I’m okay with that. I understand denial as a legitimate coping mechanism. Sometimes people need time to absorb something they cannot take in all at once. I only hope it is a stepping stone, not a destination. This is real, and Michael and I are living with it now.

I don’t know whether I’m being honest if I say I do not fear death. I also fear roller coaster rides while anticipating them. Fear is another weird thing. If I am afraid of approaching my death, I’m not especially aware of it. What I imagine is falling asleep, feeling at peace and free of pain. Maybe dreaming, maybe not. I don’t know what comes afterward. I do know what continuing to live with this pain has been like, and that is part of the decision too.

I grew up with a model of death that I now find almost sadistic. The Christianity I absorbed as a youth baptised me in a fear of dying almost as soon as I understood that death existed. I know other people experience their faith differently. I’m still trying to work out what I believe when I stop borrowing somebody else’s rules. There is more to write about that, too. But not now.

Life keeps arriving

Life has an outrageous sense of timing. Just when I began wondering whether young Javi could emotionally withstand the enormous task of helping us through what comes next, he told me he needed to step away for a while and deal with the stress he was feeling. He wanted to go home and spend some time with his mother and family. Good. I want him to do that too.

Then, almost out of nowhere, Jackson, the bilingual Colombian friend whose departure for Spain two months ago had left a hole in our Colombian life I had mostly stopped expecting to fill, casually but unexpectedly announced that he is coming back to Bucaramanga to live with his family.

Yes, plans can change. I know that by now. But I went from wondering who in hell would be here to help us to seeing pieces of a support system possibly reassembling themselves around us in front of my very eyes.

Make of that what you will. I certainly am. I am preparing to leave, and life keeps arriving. I am a mostly rational guy who can’t deny seeing and feeling mysticism, magic and fate all around me.

I am going to keep telling my story

All my adult life I’ve been a public figure. I’ve shared HIV, loss, politics, sex, love, boys, money, bad judgment, adventure, pain, Colombia and Michael. Why in hell would I choose to suddenly become discreet now? Choosing to die with intention and with dignity is unfamiliar territory for most people I know. It was unfamiliar territory for me. So I intend to keep writing about it.

I want to hear your questions and concerns. I may occasionally want arguments. I don’t promise to answer everything, and at some point there may be things I decide belong only to Michael, our family and the people physically with us. I have no idea yet where that boundary is. For now, the door is open.

And I want to leave Colombia with gratitude. Whatever else I have written about this country, I want to show respect for what it is offering me: a way to have my suffering taken seriously and my own voice heard in decisions about the end of my life. I am not sure my own country would offer me the same opportunity. To me, that feels like an extraordinary gift to a stranger.

And yes, we still need help

I wish this part of the story had disappeared. It hasn’t. The need for financial assistance has become greater, not smaller. There are new medical expenses, possible physician fees, transportation, probably travel to Bogotá, lodging and support for the people helping us. There is also the continuing cost of living here while preparing Michael’s return home. Packing, apartment expenses, bills that do not disappear merely because I have acquired a shorter calendar.

Getting Michael safely home and leaving him with the resources and support he needs matters to me more now than ever. So yes, the Kofi campaign asking for financial help during this exceptional and unusual time in our lives will remain part of this story. If you can help, please know that would be welcomed. If you can’t afford to help economically, stay. Read, ask questions, share something I write if you think it matters. Tell Michael you love him.

Weeks

This is an announcement. An abrupt one, perhaps even a brutal one. I said weeks, not months. But compared with hours or days, weeks can be a lot of time to process what is happening. Time to talk, to write, to see people, and for Michael and me to prepare.

I feel more confident about my decision now. I have things I still want to finish and probably several stories I’ll start without finishing. I want to laugh. I want to notice what suddenly matters and what I am startled to discover no longer does. I have had a very fulfilling life, and I still have some things to do with the time I have.

I’ve spent much of my life sharing my story. I don’t know why I would stop now just because the subject has become death. Life includes death. That is a fact. That is reality.

There is more to come. I don’t want to make this trip alone. You are invited to come along.