A notion of my father reborn emerged. Suddenly, in the darkness lit only by the nightlight in the corridor outside, the idea of reincarnation seemed not so foreign. What did he say a day ago? "I am ready to give birth." How we'd all laughed! Something nonsensical to us uttered during whatever morphine-induced dream he'd travelled eyes shut yet flickering. Not so foreign now.

I tied the thought to the pink and silver foil balloon and the fluffy pink monkey my nephew James bought him from the gift shop downstairs; an awkward present but better than "Get Well." and the grossest of all: "Congratulations!" His softer side had opted for "It's a girl!" because, I guess, it was the happiest choice available.

We don't have a girl in the family. Five boys between my brother and me. "Enough blue, maybe," James figured.

My dying father lay surrounded by pink and silver foil and fluffy girly stuff. Somehow it worked. The pink monkey never far from his reach, his hand resting on it and when he was turned to avoid bed sores or to ease his breathing, the nurses dutifully replaced the monkey back where it was. Their empathy (most of them too young to have the hardened no-nonsense look of older nurses in self-protection mode) flowed to me and I reached out. I touched stranger's arms and stared into eyes and repeated "Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate it."

Did dad get the joke? Was he chuckling at the boys' nonsense? Nonsense nevertheless founded by a boundless love for this man who created their mother and their father. They carried his genes. His lineage. His history. Their pride palpable in the room and strutting down the long corridors. Their anguish too, sparking and hissing; testosterone at odds with the need to cry, to release some of the unfamiliar emotion of helplessness.

I understood them. In my car, to and from everywhere we needed to be when not at dad's side, music went on and jokes and laughter flowed back and forth between the two in the front and the two in the back. We became this odd quartet hellbent on humour and lighthearted banter. It was a release. Occupants of other cars stared into ours and perceived momentary pictures of glee. They captured our joy and took it with them, frame after frame, one after another car.

Marcus the miracle in all this melee of emotions playing out like a Greek Tragedy. My quiet child, my secret child, my sensitive and empathetic child emerged and joined our crew of three almost imperceptibly. We were one day four. I, as a mother, living a version of 'mother heaven' inside my car and out. Two sons on either side striding protectively whenever we walked someplace. A nephew strutting a little ahead, forming the advance guard. Was I not the luckiest mother in the world? People stared at us. Who were we? We must be 'someones' to be displaying such unity and more-so, confidence within this unity- despite the fact we were comprised of three young men and a middle-aged woman. Three sons, they must assume. Lucky woman.

I was! Some moments such as this one, I thought, maybe this was how my father made up for his many failings and his ugly side. Were he not who he had been, maybe my sons, maybe my nephew would not be at my side- maybe they'd have outgrown me and discarded me to the parent-duty pile. He'd showered his love on them. Their young lives (especially of my two) were full of memories inclusive of him. They'd never known a home without their grandfather in it.

"He's really been our only male role-model, mum," Dylan observed some days back.  "He taught us to ride bikes, remember? And he built us the cubby-house and remember the hard plastic thingy with holes he wrapped round our first trampoline so we wouldn't fall out?"

"Ye babe."

There was no sadness to his statement. No regret it hadn't been otherwise. I was not shocked. Their father's absence (I've known for some time now) had been processed and they had moved beyond, bestowing on their grandfather the honour reserved for fathers. Whatever my father had been to me - and they were well-aware of every detail now - to them he was the father they looked up to as one who was there. There with them through every milestone thus-far. Intertwined in their life-stories. Embedded in early, deep memories.

Happy memories. Funny ones. Others - more fundamental because my twisted relationship oft conflicted with their consistently loving one - too private for me to know. A male thing. And each of his three eldest grandsons carried this private male thing with swagger and pride displayed of course differently because despite their bond, brothers and cousin were strong individuals.

Some of my fears shattered in the process. Others, exulted. I feared the introduction of a fourth into our tight little (family-within-a-family) community. The balance of power adjustments, the personality clashes and ideological differences- given the different childhood experiences between my two and their cousin. I feared my boys perceiving James as a threat, taking up my attention and my emotions. He was fiery, like me. We argued vehemently, drowning out comments or attempts at interjection by either son. Simply, we were simpatico. Very similar in far too many things.

After some weeks of adjustments however... here I was. The luckiest mother in the world. I owed my dad. Maybe - I thought this often - maybe this here, this now, this bond, this quartet... maybe it had needed the sacrifice of my father's life. The result being both his offering and his reward. Oh God! He needed to know! Oh God!

I was still in his embrace! How was this possible? Moments had become hours in my head.

"I won't make it, my little bird."

"No no no no no!" His statement fractured me in two. One half protesting, vehement, refusing to allow the possibility any merit. Of course he will make it! (Oh God, he wont!)

The other... these words I did remember! I remembered them! "What is it, my little bird?" I remembered this exact phrase! A single verbatim truth, a pure memory shared between him and me. Not passed on. Not retold. It never existed (least to me) outside of us two.

I must have gone to him with questions. Many questions, I imagine.

"I forgive you," I heard myself say. "I love you dad. I understand, okay? I understand. You did your best. I know dad!" I leaned into his ear. "Look at what you have made possible! The three boys here, the younger two overseas... Five boys dad! They wouldn't exist without you. They love you so much! So thank you, you understand? Thank you dad."

No tears. Nor could I move; the knife again wedged on the nerve in my back. I felt the agonising stabs yet I could not move. Hugging my father felt a state of being I didn't know I was missing. Not till now.

An ineffective squeeze and then his arm dropped off to the side. He began the laboured pattern of potato-counting breaths. I noted one side – the no breath side – now tipped even more heavily. Fuck it all. Losing a father long-lost and rediscovered at the point of a new and devastatingly permanent loss? Cruel bitch life really. Because here was the thing: My father, during his few moments of lucidity and even when assumed asleep was not the father of just before he entered hospital; rather, he was the father before his 2001 stroke. One with a fully-functional brain.

The father of a few weeks ago or some months ago, even some years ago... with a severe frontal cortex stroke... he could not possibly comprehend any of this- least in a way he or we understood.

Impossible to grasp how adamant I was about this without any evidence other than my experience. We were communicating he and I on a different plane. He heard me. I knew this. And out of everyone in the room, he sought me because I gave him his greatest joy: He'd got his daughter back.

He'd got his daughter back. The Prodigal Child returned. The errant child back in the fold. And this child, this daughter, I... felt the weight of so much regret lift of off me like gossamer. I watched bits of me float away knowing they were bad bits, no-longer-needed- bits, extraneous, unnecessary.

Moments of impossibility. Had you asked me even a week ago I'd have thought you insane. What? Me and my dad buddies and pals? Lovingness between us? A week ago he'd been cursing my God and blaming me for his every failure. And I'd been cruel in turn in the only way I could hurt his damaged brain: Withholding his only pleasure. Denying him the consistency and pattern and routine his mind needed to function adequately. His dilapidated brain protesting lamely.

I spent half my life fearing him and half my life spiting him. Sadistically paying back in small, consistent stabs. "I control your life now," was what it told him. My behaviour  publicly hiding my private contempt. "I hold little regard for your existence beyond that of a nuisance I must fit into my day." Yeah. Some daughter I'd turned out.

But he got me back! In his embrace time rolled backward for me and I was a little girl comforted and he - maybe he stayed in the present - an old frail man seeking the warmth of a loving daughter's embrace to counter his fear. Maybe we both got what we most needed.

Now to stay in this state for as long as-

Voices around me. Mum and the boys must have arrived and I'd not registered their presence. I felt my mother edging between us. I stepped back, I watched her lean in, lift his arm across her humped back only for it to drop again. I heard her say, "Why don't you call for me, Dimitri mou, why don't you hug me?" Receiving no viable response, she began intoning my words. "Breathe Dimitri mou, breathe!"

Resentment a sizeable lump at my throat. "I am not finished damn it, there's more I need to say to him and you in your convoluted craziness chose this moment to compete with me? This fucking moment?" I was screaming at her in my head. Irrational. I didn't even know there was a competition going on so whilst my mind was shrieking it was also processing information gathered these past days of makeshift sitting around a hospital bed in a small room without opening windows.

Funny. This once I sensed no claustrophobia present in me, in fact, the opposite. As I trawled for instances where my mother's resentment was in hindsight evident but lost to each moment's overall craziness, I welcomed the closeness of everyone to everyone; the draping over armchairs; the sharing of hard hospital vinyl seats- one bony bum-cheek each because we were all so thin now.

Dementia is not Alzheimer's... Another fucking notch on the spectrum of losing one's mind.

I left her with him and flicked my head toward the open door. Dylan saw first and nodded. The other two caught on and we were out of the room in seconds. Marching down the corridor. Pausing at the locked doors and reading the sign again: 'Keep these doors closed. We have a wandering patient inside'. Going down two flights of stairs and then following the taped blue line to the hospital entrance. Nodding along the way at one or several recognizable faces now.

"Smoking gets people talking," Dylan remarked as the three of us lit up right by the 'No smoking' sign, joining another half a dozen.

"How so?"

"Think about it. We're all strangers but we have something in common. It breaks the ice. We come out here and chat to each other because there's an assumed bond. You wouldn't ordinarily approach total strangers otherwise, would you?"

The kid was right again. I followed his thought patterns (my brain so much slower than his and never more evident then when he was scrolling for a movie to watch and he'd skimmed all the info out of the description paragraph and clicked on the next one whilst I remained still stuck in the first sentence, lumbering reading it word by word. Like I was taught...) and pride burst in me. My kid had reined in his impatience and become a thinker. A deep thinker. He followed observations through to analysis and conclusion. He tested theories. He questioned. Everything.

My other kid thought deeply as a way of life. Introspection was his forte. He sucked up information like his brother- sometimes this consumption of knowledge emerged in a comment or a wry remark. We all stared in amazement. Where the hell did that come from?

Oh how lucky I was to have been blessed with these sons! This nephew too, who also questioned and was learning now to follow through and process. The four of us on the same page despite differences in age and experience. Their thirst the perfect balance to my outpouring of knowledge. Their enthusiastic debates (inclusive or exclusive of me) opportunities of further libation for this parched brain.

After a brief pause to answer "How is he doing today?" from no-spleen-lady, we retraced steps back to the fifth floor to stand outside the door and read the sign again, this time from the opposite side. I think we all wondered who this wandering patient might be. Our heads always swivelled into rooms checking the ins and outs of their occupancy. Some lay like vegetables for many days. Others appeared for a day and were gone, who knew where to. Only one room, however, was given over to my father's dying.

'Palliative care', they call it. Dylan had looked it up the first time it was proposed. "It just means pain relief, mum..."

"I know babe." I sensed his disappointment. Maybe he'd expected some level of hope. I don't know. I could not protect my sons from things they discovered. I got this long ago. Real gold, fool's gold, crock of shit- it was all the same: Their discovery, their responsibility. They inherited my inquisitive mind. My restless mind. Blessing or curse, I could only stand by and observe and be at hand if needed. I could not interfere otherwise- to do so in order to protect them in advance felt a disservice and a detriment. I would not have my sons compromised. Not by their mother.

We found my mother on the armchair holding her head. Sniffling. Dylan handed her the cappuccino. I popped her water on the wheeled tray table next to my father's bed. I saw the remnant's of the day's meals- the cereal untouched, the pureed fruit untouched, the soup untouched, the hideous green jelly still with its foil top intact; only the thickened water open. It was the day before his birthday and he had refused all meals today. I worried he would not see his birthday. I worried he would not see his son, arriving on his birthday.

"Dad?" Something heard muttered. "Dad?" Closer to his ear.

More mumbled words but his eyes opened. He saw me. A nurse walked in with a syringe- his three-hourly dose of a muscle relaxant.

"What day is it tomorrow, dad?"

"My birthday..."

"And who is coming to see you tomorrow?"

"My son..."