I kind of wish we had gotten a sort of fake out episode after Laurie died when Rick was going crazy where he has a nightmare. In that nightmare he dreams about what it would have been if he had dreamt the fall. Like in the dream he “wakes up” from the “nightmare” (that is the apocalypse) and he makes it out of the hospital. He gets home while on leave from work and chauffeurs Carl’s class on an educational field trip to the Greene farm, he goes in to work to get his badge and gun to return to duty when he gets the green light, there he sees Shane bringing in Merle and Daryl for drug charges and Carol is there bailing Ed out for something (probably DA, but you never know). He gets home and they order pizza that gets delivered by Glen, and as he and Laurie spend time out on the porch, he sees Morgan and Dwayne walking the sidewalk, and waves, but then the thing that wakes him up is Morgan telling him it can’t last and he knows it. The nightmare part is that it’s a dream has often, he doesn’t have nightmares about the walkers, or the new reality, he dreams about a life that’ll never happen and all the regrets that come with that.