No other place can give you such a rollercoaster of emotions. No other place will drag you through terrifying fear, depressing sense of guilt, tears of sorrow to tears of joy and laughter caused by spark of hope. From happiness filling out your heart, as all those positive test results makes you see things more optimistically. To indifference, caused by lack of strength due to constant duties you need to fulfill when being in the facility. And back to sadness, because of this little demonic whisper telling you how unrealistic is to finish this training with Szymon coming back to normal life. Silenced by his smile and joy when playing toys with me.

And on this path of peaks and valleys to sustain sanity you develop, consciously or not, certain type of defense mechanisms. You start to have this strange sense of humor, black, sarcastic humor, which in most cases helps you to fight off the depression.

It was very disturbing for me when for the first time I have faced parents in the common kitchen area laughing, having fun, while I could not feel anything else besides sadness and powerlessness.  It was such a contrast to my emotions, that I have start to wonder. “What the hack is wrong with those people?!? Their child is about to leave, fly to heaven, and instead of sorrow I see joy on their faces?” I could understand Corporals and Captains having fun at work. One liked the job, other needed to cope somehow with stress. But parents?

Soon, I’ve realized, that there is no other way but to let it all go, trust God and just see where he leads you. Time help me also with it. Once we got a bit more familiar with all the procedures. Facility stopped being unknown, horrific place to us. And we heard from Captains, that it is not that quick and certain, that our son will fly to heaven. We start to have more and more those moments when smile returned to our faces. And enjoyed the time we had we Szymek as much as we could.

People who we started to meet in the CSD also helped us forget for a second where we were and what we were going through.

„Oh shit! I wet my bed!” Mark stood up quickly seeing a stain on his bed. “Neah, can’t be” He looked at his dry trousers, making him even more puzzled on what has happened during the night.

“What the hack has happen?” He nervously started to check himself to see why his bed is wet while the clothing does not show any sight of him having a bad night. The mixture of slight embarrassment, discomfort and puzzlement on what could potentially happen.

Mag seeing Mark trying to figure out what has happened at night could not help laughing.

“Oh, just face it. You peed in a bed!” She smirked at him.

This did not help, as Mark started to be even more embarrassed. At this point he was sure, that this was not a case, but could not find a reason for his bed to be wet.

“Shit! Drip leaked.” He shouted and felt a relief in his voice, as it just proved it was not him.

This did not last long, as now he started to worry why this happened and if Bubcia will not need again the meds.

Mark called the corporal to come and fix the issue. In the meantime, Ann, his wife came after a night spent home, to take care of Bubcia.

“Good morning Mrs. Ann. Coming to change your husband?” Corporal welcomed Ann.

“Yes, I leave him for one day and we have an accident.” Ann responded to Corporal, at the same time teasing Mark a bit.

“You have a nice-looking sister.” Corporal continued while fixing Bubcia’s drip.

“Sister?” Ann asked confused as she did not have any sister. At least not to her knowledge.

“Yes, she was here yesterday in the evening, when I was starting my shift. I saw her leaving the room.”

“A, thank you, it was me…with make up!” Ann responded with a smile and slight confusion, as she never would assume that dressing up and putting make up on can change her looks so much.

Ann and Mark were this breath of fresh air much needed in those stuffy rooms. First people, we share the room with, who brought with them, this very needed here, sense of humor. With slight distance to reality and a bit of sarcasm, it helped to loosen up dense atmosphere. They were the ones who helped us cross the bridge to the other side, to join those parents who digested the fact that for next couple of months they will need to be here and started to find some positives in that situation. And this helped a lot, fact that Mag could take her mind of the training, Szymon uniqueness and talk about other, non-related topics, help her not to collapse. From clothes, shoes, wine, travelling and books to just making fun of situations we were struggling with caused that all those demons that were hunting us for past few weeks were not that scary any more.