Navigating Grief (Part Two): Isolation, Numbness, Anger, Sorrow, Exhaustion. Welcome to My Roller Coaster.

It’s been over forty years since I lost a parent (my father, who died suddenly of a brain aneurysm when I was 21), and it would appear that I have to relearn, from scratch, how to navigate through the roller coaster of emotions that accompanies such a parental loss (i.e., in the case of my mother, who passed away a little over two weeks ago).

I sometimes feel as if I were drowning.

I want to stress that I have people (my psychiatrist and my active listening service) and resources (such as my employer’s Employee and Family Assistance Program /EFAP) that I can use to get me through this overwhelming sense of grief. I also have my friends and acquaintances, but I find myself isolating myself rather than reaching out to them, afraid of reaching out and expecting rejection. I know that that’s my depression talking, but it’s hard to talk back when all you feel is overwhelmed and exhausted.

I’ve had several days where I have found it extremely difficult to even follow my psychiatrist’s simple instructions: to focus on sleeping, showering, eating, and going outdoors. Today I got three of the four done, as well as loading up and running the dishwasher, emptying out one of suitcases I had taken with me to Alberta when my mom died, and taking out the garbage to the bin. So I will chalk that up as a win.

But I have had several days where I have slept 16-20 hours, and several mornings where I crawl out of bed at noon, already berating myself for not taking my medications at 6:00 am like I normally do.

And I find myself listening to sad songs on a loop and crying, because that way it feels at least SOMETHING is coming up, as opposed to the numbness I sometimes feel I am drowning in.

Or, alternatively, the anger in which I am burning. One of the reasons I have been pulling away from my friends and acquaintances lately is because I have discovered that I can (and do) make some devastating errors in judgment, and that has often been because something or somebody made me irrationally angry. I find myself lashing out at people, then being horrified by my behaviour, then apologizing, then withdrawing to my man cave.

I. AM. EXHAUSTED.

Navigating Grief: Eat. Sleep. Shower. Go Outside. (And Second Life.)

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

One of the advantages of having a blog that is branded with your own name is that anything you write is topical. And today’s topic is grief, and how to navigate it. (Hey, my blog, my rules. This wouldn’t be the first time I got side-tracked, by the way.)

My psychiatrist’s instructions are simple. Focus on four things: sleeping, eating, showering, and going outside. Nothing else matters (however, we did agree to some time spent in Second Life 😉).

I have to give myself the time and space I need to grieve properly for my mother, and I have to respect that process, rather than diving heedlessly and headfirst into one of the many other projects that I have planned (like, say, working on my OER textbook about the metaverse, or decluttering and doing a thorough spring cleaning of my apartment, which currently resembles a Red Cross disaster area).

Eat. Sleep. Shower. And go outside. (And Second Life, which is helping me stay sane because it gives me a sense of control, something which is notably absent from many aspects of my real life). I have been listening to the following song a lot.

I also find myself crying a lot, at inconvenient times, like in the middle of a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar at Rainbow Stage (which led to me making a weepy exit at intermission, with an apology text later broadcast to my friend group, who no doubt wondered where the fuck I went). I have been trying to push myself to do “normal” things, like go to friend’s 60th birthday parties and Rainbow Stage musicals, and I land up leaving early because frankly, I am exhausted, and I am a mess. But I know that I won’t be an exhausted mess forever.

Sometimes I put on a list of sad/grieving songs from Apple Music, and listen, and sob. My psychiatrist doesn’t think that this is useful, but it seems to me to be a good way to get some of those trapped feelings out. I, who normally take such great pride in my ability to wordsmith a sentence, or explain a complicated process or idea in a way that is easy to understand, am utterly flummoxed by my inability to articulate what is going on inside my brain right now. I struggle to find the words, and sometimes, all that comes out is tears, and more tears. So I lay down on the sofa, wrap myself in an afghan crocheted by my mother (an orange-and-yellow design that simply screams 1970s), and weep. Here are two of those songs which I weep to (be sure to click the CC to see the subtitles/closed captioning of the lyrics on the first video; the second one already includes the lyrics on screen).

So that’s kind of where I am right now. Sleep. Shower. Eat. Weep. Go outside. Do something in Second Life. Repeat as necessary until I feel like a human being again. Yes, I do have people to talk to (both professionals and friends, including an active listening service which I still use regularly, although we now tend to talk via Discord rather than meet up as avatars in Second Life). And yes, eventually, I will venture out and engage with people again in my social networks, and initiate outings and events.

Not tonight. And not this week. But soon. There will come a day, a day that is better than today.

My blog will still be on hiatus for a while.

A Memorial to My Mother

My mother recently passed away in her local community hospital, surrounded by her family. She was 87 years old, married to my father for almost 25 years before he suddenly died, and then remarried for another 29 years. She lived a good, long life, long enough to have two of her great-grandchildren sit in her lap. I was able to talk with her before she died, to tell her I loved her. She told me she loved me, and was proud of the man that I have become. We may have had our disagreements but we achieved closure before she passed away.

I have found that navigating through grief can be a very difficult process, one I am still working through.

I have one special Second Life alt (alternate avatar), because she bears my mother’s name, Karin (the German form of the English name Karen). As a little child she became a refugee in the messy aftermath of World War II, and eventually her widowed mother (my grandmother) married a man who brought his new family over to Canada when she was still a young girl, who didn’t speak any English.

I inherited from Karin my creativity (as expressed here in Second Life) as well as her well-honed sense of humour (which I also express here in SL!). I also got from her my distinctive, piercing laugh; you can immediately tell exactly where I am sitting in a crowded (movie or play) theatre, once the first joke lands! As a child, I used to lie in bed and hear her absolutely scream with laughter at a funny television show like Carol Burnett.

So today Karin is an angel, a loose representation of what she would have looked like as a young woman in the 1960s, when I was born. The retro hairstyle is available as a free gift (in the blonde colour HUD only) at the WINGSDS booth at the ACCESS event on now; the style is called ER0526.

The head is GENUS , cobbled together from bits and pieces of the Margo Genus Morph L$88 head and head skin offer from a couple of years ago, and the more recent Limited Edition 2026 female Genus Morph head giveaway. To it, I added the Genus Morph beak nose, the same kind of nose that my mother had, and her grey-blue eyes. The angel dress and halo were gifts from the most recent round of the Doves Dream shopping event, and the wings I picked up for free using past Blueberry store credit. The body is Maitreya LaraX. The handheld candle is the gift from .Viki. booth at the SL23B Shop and Hop event, on now.

So, in a sense, this alt is my memorial to my mom.

I’m going to need to take some more time than I expected to heal; please bear with me. I am grieving, and I am feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Thank you for your patience.

Under Pressure

Tuesday evening/Wednesday morning’s storm was the worst I have ever experienced in my life

It was at work Tuesday afternoon around 4:00 p.m. when a coworker came over to my office cubicle to tell me that a Tornado Watch had been issued for Winnipeg. I hurriedly packed up my gear, hopped into my car, and drive home just as the skies turned dark grey and the first fat raindrops splashed on my windshield.

That evening, I experienced the worst storm I have lived through in my entire life (and I am 62-1/2 years old now). My cellphone kept going off with multiple Tornado Warning alerts (I lost count after 30). After a too-close-for-comfort, LOUD lightning strike nearby, I grabbed some pillows and blankets and headed for my bathroom, where I sat in my bathtub, following a storm-tracker livestreamer on YouTube which was posted to the r/Winnipeg subreddit on my iPad, and keeping my iPhone handy, which was still blaring alerts on regular intervals, sometimes minutes apart.

I was lucky. While parts of Winnipeg received baseball-sized hailstones, and many streets, underpasses, and home basements were flooded, my car, my apartment, and my neighbourhood escaped relatively unscathed. No hail damage to my car. However, I got zero sleep that night, and the stress exacerbated my pre-existing neck and shoulder pain, so I landed up taking a sick day on Wednesday, and spent almost all of it asleep in bed.

I’m dealing with a lot right now: a family member in rapidly deteriorating health, which might necessitate an emergency trip back to Alberta on short notice; my continuing neck and shoulder pain; and trying desperately to tie up loose ends and pass on information to the two librarians who are taking over my duties when I start my Research and Study leave on July 1st, 2026. I am stressed out and EXHAUSTED.

So, again, if you don’t hear from me for a while, that’s why. There’s just too much going on in my life right now to write blogposts. Thank you for understanding.