One of my favourite TV shows is The Walking Dead, along with its spin offs. I have watched religiously since the start, even sticking with it through the long series on a farm, or the rinse and repeat of find a community, destroy them, and move on again from a few series back. It is great now by the way, just as it finishes!
However a major point is that in reality the Walking Dead are not the Zombies, or walkers or whatever they may get called, but that the real walking dead are the survivors, our plucky group of men and women, battling to survive this harsh new world. So why are they the walking dead? My thoughts are that it is because they know their fate. It is all around them, they can see the inevitable, and so are just waiting for it to happen. Hence they are dead already, and so walking dead.
To a certain extent I feel this way right now. My wife has a terminal disease, which means that currently we know how the story will end, barring some new breakthrough in medical science. And that means we are the walking dead, fully aware of our fate, and waiting for it. I hate the feeling of helplessness this brings, as I feel there is nothing I can do (and as a husband and father that is extremely frustrating). Every bit of treatment, every meeting with a specialist feels like an act of kicking the can down the road, putting off the inevitable. Every time we enter a new similar phase of waiting for scans with her being just that little bit weaker, with the disease being that little bit stronger.
There is hope. As I mention every day extra is a day closer to a cure, as well as being an extra day together. These days were not expected, and we have been able to make the most of them. However those good days become less and less, and the bad days become more and more. Today has been a bad day, as the treatment has been exceptionally tough, and cumulatively has really kicked her. Thats it for now, we wait and see if it will do its thing while she rests and recovers. We wait while we all rest and recover.