I Haven’t Even Died Yet (Or have I?)

NOTE: I received a huge assist from AI to write this post. I can finally see the light and it’s not impossible that this may be my last post. I can’t stand the pain any longer. It’s all I can do to publish this draft.

I am also feeling more than a little desperate about our financial situation. We will have to hit the credit cards hard to complete my journey, a euphemism for death, and get Michael home to the USA.

If this post touches you, please consider a donation to ko-fi.com/jonkcmo.

Much love to all. -Jon

I made the announcement, and then life did something rude.

It continued.

That sentence still feels strange. Not because I have never announced anything before. If anything, I am notorious for over-sharing. I have announced moves, illnesses, relationships, failures, fundraisers, blog posts, appetites, indignations, and probably more bad ideas than any respectable adult should confess in public.

I put the public in public disclosure.

But this was different.

A few days ago I shared a blog post announcing that I intend to pursue death with dignity in Colombia because my adopted country recognizes such a choice as a human right in a way my own homeland does not. Because severe and chronic pain has driven me off the road, and I am no longer willing to let the last stretch of my life be governed entirely by disabling pain, opioid timing, fear of mornings, sleep deprivation, or whether Michael can hear me calling for help from the next room.

Friends and followers responded in ways that surprised me.

I do not mean Facebook “engagement,” though that is what the algorithm would call it, I suppose. I mean human contact. People I have known for decades, some of them only virtual friends, and others I barely realized were still paying attention, responded, and not just with likes or hearts. They wrote comments. They remembered some version of me that I had apparently left behind in their lives without realizing it.

It was weird. Just as my post was one of the weirdest things I have ever posted publicly online. I confess that it was also rewarding. Validating. Ego-stroking, if I am being honest, and I might as well be honest, because I am running out of time to pretend humility is my dominant virtue.

It felt a bit like spying on my own memorial service.

That is not normal.

People save the good words for after someone dies. They gather in rooms, write posts, tell stories, say what they wish they had said. The dead person gets none of it, unless the afterlife has better Wi-Fi than I expect.

There is something strange and tender about being told that you mattered while I am still here to blush, argue, laugh, correct the record, or say thank you. I find myself committing to answer every person who reaches toward me. I want to touch everyone who is touching me.

That has become one of the unexpected gifts of this whole impossible process.

I haven’t even died yet, and people are already telling me why my existence on this plane mattered.

Some people have called me brave. I understand the kindness behind the word, but it does not feel right to me. I do not feel brave.

I feel tired. I feel trapped by pain. I feel curious, irritated, vain, grateful, selfish, loving, exhausted, and oddly calm. I feel responsible for Michael and guilty that I cannot do more for him. I feel impatient with logistics. I feel helpless and distressed that the final weeks of my life include so many invoices.

But brave? No. Unless I misunderstand the definition of that word.

I am not walking into fire to save strangers. I am not volunteering for danger because courage compels me. I am looking at the options left to me and choosing the one that seems least cruel to me.

I am not brave so much as I am trying to pay attention to what my body is telling me.

The question of fear, to me, is stranger.

I am not afraid. Or at least I am not aware of fear.

That bothers me a little. Shouldn’t I be afraid? Have I skipped some required stage? Am I in denial? Is fear just waiting for the closing scene?

Maybe.

I reserve the right to change my mind right up to the moment. That is not a loophole. That is the whole point. A chosen death only remains chosen if the choice is still alive at the end.

Right now, fear is not what I feel most. Curiosity, yes. Puzzlement, certainly. Sorrow for Michael. Wonder at the strange kindness arriving from people while I am still here to receive it. Anger at the pain and exhaustion from the now-daily morning wars against it. But fear? If it is there, it is not driving.

Of course, the language gets weird immediately.

Death is supposed to be normal and natural. We say that all the time, usually after someone else has done it. But put a living person in front of us — someone still writing, eating, joking, hurting, and answering comments — and suddenly the language falls apart.

People pause.

“So do you know when you’re going to…?”

To what?

Pass? Leave? Do it? Or one of my favorites: cross over. As if we can know that there is something… there.

Nobody wants to say, “When are you going to kill yourself?” And I get it. I may be as guilty as anyone reading this of reaching for euphemisms. I say death with dignity. I say passing. I say going home. I say almost anything except the blunt thing sitting in the middle of the room.

Death. Suicide.

It’s awkward, to say the least.

Our cultural language was built to help us talk around it, beside it, spiritually through it, medically past it — anything but straight into it.

And when we do start to speak frankly, ordinary language collides with itself.

“I love you to death.”

“I almost died laughing.”

“That man will be the death of me yet.”

We say these things because death is usually dressed safely in metaphor. Then suddenly the joke is on us.

My father’s last words were: “Thank God you only die once.”

I think about that now. You only die once. If I only get one death, I do not want to waste it pretending I am not thinking about it.

The Pain

The other thing that has changed lately is the pain.

I had hoped that the nerve ablation I had more than two weeks ago would buy me some time free of severe pain and opioid fog. Nobody promised a miracle, and by now I knew better than to expect one. But hope springs eternal, or something like that.

What I asked the Universe for, in my own head, was simple: just give me two months. Not a cure. Not my old life back. Just two usable months to write and get our affairs in order. That didn’t seem unreasonable, and for the first few days, it looked possible. The worst of the morning pain backed off. I could get out of bed without anticipating terror. I was not living entirely gorked out by hydrocodone. I could move. I could think. I could almost believe we had bought the time.

Once again I fell for the immediate residual relief of the local anesthesia and probably some residual effects of short-term steroids. The ablation was yet another failure by the only measures that matter to me now.

It did something, yes. I do not want to pretend it did nothing. For a few days I danced in the hallway. I could get out of bed. I could imagine the next two months as difficult but doable. But the real test was never whether I could have a few good hours while the local anesthesia was still whispering sweet lies into my spine. The real test was whether the procedure could give me enough function, clarity, and freedom from terror to keep living this final stretch as myself.

By that measure, it failed.

The last several mornings have brought the disabling pain back. The kind of crippling pain when I try to put weight on my right leg that makes me dread getting out of bed.

I had hoped and begged for two months.

I may have gotten two weeks, though even that comes with a question mark.

So now I am learning the old rules again in an increasingly futile attempt to manage the relentless pain. Do not sleep too long. Wake up. Take the pills. Move before the pain sets like concrete. Avoid the morning shock if possible. Medicate harder than I should. Trade clarity for minimal functionality.

That is not a life plan I can live with.

It is pain management with a stopwatch.

Pain is once again in the driver’s seat. That is the main reason, above all the rest, that I am giving up on longevity. Not on life. Not on love. Not on curiosity. Not even on pleasure, because apparently some part of me remains ridiculous and alive enough to want what it wants.

I am giving up on longevity.

The pain is not with me at full volume twenty-four hours a day. There are acceptable hours, typically later in the day. That window is shrinking on a daily basis. There is still laughter. There is still food. There is still the stubborn absurdity of me wanting attention, intimacy, conversation, and, as always, the last word. My life force, whatever that phrase means, has not yet disappeared. But if I’m honest with myself, and with you, I can see that it has diminished these past two weeks.

The pain is not content with sitting in the driver’s seat. It is taking up more room. It is requiring higher doses of hydrocodone to control. It is destroying my mornings. It is draining me before the day has even started. I feel exhausted, useless, and old in a way that is different from being seventy. I can still get through some of it, but getting through is not the same as living.

Delay meant more time to write. More time to prepare Michael. More time to say goodbye. More time for José to return. More time for people I love to adjust themselves to the reality of what I have chosen. I wanted to last until November, and several of my closest friends are also begging me to hang on a little longer.

The calendar is not the one making the decision anymore.

The pain is.

That is the tension now. More time sounds like love, and in many ways it is.

But daily pain attacks have their own argument.

When Michael and Jackson saw how severe the morning flares had become — saw me trapped, paralyzed except to sob, unable to simply rise and begin the day like a person — something changed. They may not be ready. I am not asking them to be ready. But they understand why the timeline has shortened.

We are no longer talking about months.

Unless something changes quickly, I may be looking at a couple of weeks. After today, I’m even thinking days. The doctor who is assisting me requires three days’ notice.

And this is where the public story becomes even more weird. I have announced publicly that I am choosing death with dignity, but I am not dead. I am not even dying in the cinematic way people expect. I am still here. Still posting my story. Still answering comments. Still wanting attention. Fascinated with watching my vanity and ego in play. Still irritated by euphemisms. Still wanting sexual intimacy. Still laughing at death jokes that suddenly have teeth. Still trying to be kind and faithful to Michael and failing more often than I want to admit.

I am living in that interval after the announcement and before the act.

That is the place I now write from. I am in full-time morbid mode. Fixated with death. Rehearsing my final lines.

Not because I want to turn my death into content.

Or maybe I do.

That is another uncomfortable sentence, but let’s not pretend discomfort is the same as dishonesty. I am not trying to livestream the ending. I am not trying to make suffering perform tricks for the algorithm. I am trying to document not only the final chapter of my life, but the last paragraph.

I am trying to keep my life from being swallowed by silence before it ends.

I had another long video call with Doctor Saul earlier this evening with Jackson and Michael in attendance. It lasted about an hour. We went through the details again, and I have to say something clearly: my appreciation for him has grown. I do not know what I expected from a doctor stepping into this strange and heavily guarded territory, but I am starting to feel that he is taking seriously the things that matter most to me.

I have been assured that, unless something changes, I will die at home in Bucaramanga.

That matters.

I will be attended by a doctor not only until I die, but until Michael can do the necessary official task of going to the hospital with the police report to obtain the death certificate, so that my body can be released for cremation.

That matters too.

Friends will remain with Doctor Saul and my body until Jackson and Michael return with the documents. Michael will not be left alone to improvise his way through Spanish-language bureaucracy while his husband’s body is waiting in the apartment.

That may sound blunt. Good. Blunt is the correct language for me to use now.

The hardest part to explain is that I will technically be physically alone for the final act. Friends and family may be nearby. We will be able to see each other. But they cannot touch me or hold me during the few minutes when I am still aware of what is happening.

That is not because they are abandoning me.

It is because this process still has to protect the innocent.

The law and the culture have not fully caught up with the dignity this kind of death deserves. Even in Colombia, even with rights recognized, even with doctors involved, everyone must be protected from the accusation that they helped too much, touched too soon, loved too physically, or crossed some legal line while trying to comfort a dying man.

So I will do what I need to do myself.

Then they can come to me.

All of this is going to be very strange. Necessary, maybe, but strange. I do not want to be physically alone at that moment. I would prefer to be held. Of course I would. I would prefer Michael’s hand. I would prefer warmth. I would prefer not to have the law standing invisibly between my body and the bodies of people who love me.

But this is where we are.

Until the world and culture, including Colombia’s, evolve further, this is the bargain. We talk about dignity. We create legal categories. We build careful procedures. Then, at the most human moment, we still have to step back from touch in order to protect everyone left behind.

All the while, a camera will be documenting these final moments. Proof, if needed for any reason, that we followed the law.

That is not a reason to reject the process.

It is a reason to keep telling the truth about it.

The other truth is money.

The cost of dying is not cheap. That is not news to anyone who has ever paid for a funeral, a cremation, a hospital, or a plane ticket bought under pressure. But it was not in this month’s budget. It was not even really in the original escape plan.

The doctor’s fees, travel expenses, cremation, documents, and all the other little practical costs that attach themselves to death will approach $3,500.

Cash, please.

Up front.

Death with dignity may be a right, but dying still comes with invoices.

I haven’t included the gifts I feel obliged to offer those who are giving up their wage-earning hours to help me get to the finish line. Or to remain here a few days, possibly weeks, to make sure Mikey can get the death certificate and cremains before flying home. His home. Kansas City.

That is one of the reasons fundraising has become part of this story whether I like it or not. I do not like asking. I also do not like pretending that money is not part of what is happening. Money is stress. Money is timing. Money is whether Michael has help or whether he is left carrying pieces of this alone.

I have spent enough of my life writing about inequality, shame, sex, bodies, and the ways money makes liars out of people. I am not going to get pious about it now. Money is part of the room. It is standing right here beside the pain, the doctor, the crematorium, and the airline ticket Michael will eventually need without me.

There is more I want to say. A lot more.

About pain. About religion. About how we are culturally trained to fear death and hide dying. About AIDS and the men I watched become skin and bones before they were allowed to die. About why people seem more comfortable with chosen death after suffering has already stripped a person down far enough to make the choice look obvious. About the ugly question: how bad do I have to get before other people believe me?

But for now, this is the update.

The pain is back in all its hideous manifestation. Against all advice and better judgment, I’m even posting this private link to the evidence. Watch at your own risk. It contains graphic pain.

The ablation did not buy what I hoped it would buy.

The timeline in my head is changing.

Every morning now brings me closer to the day of my physical termination. I do not know how to reconcile the desire to stay with those I love — and who tell me they are not ready for this — with the suffering each day brings with it.

What am I waiting for?

And while all that is happening, something else is happening too: people are reaching toward me while I am still here to reach back.

I do not know exactly what to call that.

A living wake, maybe.

A virtual memorial service with a twist: I am still here to hear it.

I am also watching you, the readers. I am drawing energy from your comments, your stories, your messages, and your questions. You are helping me keep the words moving at a time when words are becoming harder for me to manage on my own.

It is getting more difficult for me to write my own story. I can see that coming to an end very soon. I am getting more dependent on assistance from AI, though I continue to insist on claiming the words and the process as uniquely mine.

I have used tools my whole life. Typewriters, computers, cameras, blogs, captions, cochlear implants, hearing aids, opioids, walkers, translators, friends, lovers, and now artificial intelligence. None of those tools made the life less mine.

For now, I am still here.

Still reaching back.

Still trying to make the words line up before I can’t.

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