~by Haley Lynn Gray~
On the Friday, I was on a boat in the Galápagos. It is a genuinely beautiful place. We were heading out to hike a remote island and go snorkelling.
Then the text arrived.
My father had an infection that wasn’t responding to antibiotics. He was in serious pain. The chance of treatment working was, realistically, none. Did I want him moved to hospital for more aggressive treatment — intravenous antibiotics, the full escalation?
He was already in hospice. He had already been through a great many infections. And I was several thousand miles away on a boat, holding a phone.
The decision nobody prepares you for
I had to weigh his chances, his quality of life, what he would have wanted, and what more intervention would actually buy him. Then answer.
There was no version of that decision that felt good. That’s the part people don’t tell you about decisions like this: you aren’t choosing between a good outcome and a bad one. You’re choosing between two bad ones, with incomplete information, on somebody else’s timetable.
Sometimes it is hard. Not complicated — hard.
What that taught me about deciding
I’ve made a great many business decisions since, and nothing has ever felt like that one. But some of what it taught me transfers.
Know what the person would want before you’re asked. The conversations nobody wants to have — about care, about wishes, about how far to go — are a gift to whoever ends up holding the phone. Have them early, while they’re theoretical.
You will rarely have enough information. Waiting for certainty is itself a decision, and usually the worse one. At some point you decide with what you have.
Ask what you’re actually buying. More treatment isn’t automatically more life; sometimes it’s more suffering. The same question works in business — more spending isn’t automatically more growth. What does this actually buy, and for whom?
Distance doesn’t disqualify you. I felt I should have been there. But being in the room wouldn’t have changed the medical facts, and it wouldn’t have made the choice more right. Guilt about circumstance is a poor guide to good decisions.
Decide, then don’t relitigate it. Turning an irreversible decision over afterwards changes nothing and costs plenty. Make it as well as you can with what you have, and then let it stand.
And for anyone in it now
If you’re running a business while someone you love is dying, the business will have to take second place for a while, and that’s correct. Lower the bar deliberately, tell people something, and let them help.
Take the trip if you can. I’m glad I was in the Galápagos rather than sitting at home waiting — he’d have thought so too.
And be gentle with yourself about the decision you made. You made it with love, at a distance, with bad options and no time. That’s all anybody can do.
Sometimes it is hard. It’s supposed to be — that’s what it means to have loved someone.
