Living with a terminal partner

I just want to describe what it’s like for me because it helps to share.  A lot of the narrative around cancer is about survival against the odds, so caring for a wife that is terminal, means I have few places to go to find similar stories to mine.  It’s devastating to live with someone put through mental and physical hell only to be disappointed time and time again. The treatment compounds the devastation of the disease and I am an observer of the daily cruelty.  My wife has experienced a sudden deterioration and I have been sitting with the dawning realisation that her death is no longer something in the distant future, but is soon.  The death was meant to sit in the centre of my vision, just on the horizon and gradually get bigger and bigger over time, such that I could familiarise myself with it before it arrived.  Instead, it seems to have suddenly raced towards me and in doing so I see things I never saw before, horrific and terrifying things emanating from it and in to the day to day fabric of my life.  Her eyes appear less and less vital and her skin has developed a grey pallor.  Her hair, once thick, is struggling to grow back to any degree.  There are stumbles on occasion and confused thoughts.  There are regular different symptoms and sources of pain.  Sitting up in bed from lying is difficult for her to achieve.   Her appetite is starting to reduce.  She is letting go of once loved activities and things.  She is in the stage prior to active dying,  when the preparations are made.  The silence on bad days is deafening.  I grow closer to tears all of the time and unable to maintain my composure in the way I usually can.  I feel wounded and child like.  The world is a big scary place.   This truly is grown up stuff and I’m not a grown up.  I pretended I was and for a time it seemed real, but this is too hard.