Dad's long had this rather gallows-humour joke about being in the "departure lounge". According to him he's been there at least 5 or 6 years and I used to scoff at this and tell him his flight wasn't even on the boards yet. But I think its time to face up to the fact that he is in the departure lounge now. He certainly thinks so and he's been talking, quite calmly, about dying; about changes to his will, funeral arrangements and other things that have to happen.

I popped back to Oxford this evening after work and found him slightly recovered from the weekend. His appetite was quite good and he polished off his supper, unaided, in no time. But he is clearly weaker than he was even a week ago. I alternated between finding all this talk about the end too much and being quite business-like about everything. We had a nice talk about all sorts of things, more than we normally do (a companiable and comfortable silence being our ususal m.o) and I was able to say some things I'd been wanting to say.

So now we wait. We are going to wait this out together, for as long as it takes.