Open Door

+April 26, 2026+

...for so long as one door is open,
we are not in prison.
-G.K. Chesterton

Definitively: in a final, conclusive,
or authoritative manner
that settles a matter
without doubt
or need for further change.

+++++++

My dear friends,

Allison and I are living in
one of our hardest moments.

We feel trapped in that
we have to make
an impossible decision.

After several appointments
with doctors
from my ENT,
oral surgery,
palliative care, and
nephrology team,
we’ve been inundated
with information
about what it would look like
to go through
this next major oral surgery.

We also were told
what to expect
if we do not go through with it.

Both paths are mind boggling.

Both paths have
very real, very hard
consequences.

We are exhausted
from the constant onslaught
of cascading cancers and
multiple medical procedures.

And choosing to go into
another 13-hour surgery
has made me pause
to discern if this is something
I’m willing to do.

If I do not have the surgery,
according to my doctors,
I would have months, not years,
left to live.

Hearing that pronouncement
leaves me stone-cold sober.

In doing the surgery, there is
no guarantee
that I’ll bounce back
or
that another cancer
wouldn’t
come take its place
while I’m still healing.

My doctors have been excellent
in letting us know
they would support
whichever choice I make.

And so today, I lay this
before your feet feeling
exhausted, shocked, and sad.

Either path I choose
is bound to come with
much pain and suffering.

Either path will wreck me
and reek havoc
on my heart/mind/body.

Either path is filled with trauma.

And, I question,
”Is this finally all too much?”

Is this the moment I say,
“No more.”
or
“Know more.”

I zoom out to look around
at our weary world
and see the chaos,
harm, and destruction
taking place
by a few angry men
and I think,
“will it just continue
to be more of this?”

But then I zoom in
to look at Allison and Maya
and our little family,
whom I love fiercely,
and I think,
“what is fair to them?”

“How does my decision
impact their lives...”

+++++++

What do we do
when there are
no good options?

When there’s no easy way out?

When every decision
comes with a cost
and a price to pay?

Some turn to
prayer and pleading.

Some turn to
family and friends.

Some turn off completely.

I go into this decision
already fractured and fragmented
from fifteen years fraught with
medical mishaps and mysteries.

What’s the loving choice?
What’s the kind choice?

In all of this,
one thing remains obvious:
I do have a choice.

And that may be
the most unbearable thing
I know.

Choice.

Choice leaves the door
cracked open for me,
should I want
to walk through it.

Choice puts me
in the driver’s seat of decisions,
but it leaves me no road map
to show me where I’m going.

And maybe that means
I’m not
confined to this life’s
permanent prison
just yet.

But hope is quickly
fleeting and fraying
making it hard to continue
the game that I’m playing.

Whatever the path I choose,
I will do so
in a frail and brittle body.

Choosing to go ahead
with the surgery will,
almost certainly,
bring me right back
to this predicament
in weeks? Months?

Choosing to not have surgery
solidifies my spot
on this sinking ship
that is going to
steadily and definitively sink
to the bottom
of the deepest depths.

It now feels like
one minute to midnight.

One minute before
the cuckoo clock crows,
crying out to me:
“Tic, toc, Sean.
Life moves on--
with or without you.”

+++++++

All I can ask is that you
stay with me
here.

Sit with me in the midst of
terrible options.

Pray for me
that I may discern
what Love is asking me to do
in this
harrowing,
horrific,
Holy
moment.

Whatever comes next,
thank you for trying
to help hold
the ungraspable sands
as they continue to slip through
my trembling hands.

.