Hi,
I really am sorry to hear that you're having a rotten time of things at the moment. It sounds like you have more than your fair share of **** to cope with. That's horrible for you and it would be easy to feel overwhelmed by it all; to see no light at the end of the tunnel. I hope however that I can offer a glimmer of light by saying that firstly, please remember that this 'cornucopia of crap' will not last. Things are looking downright grim right now, and it's understandably easy to only see the bad things that are happening and to overlook the good, even if those good things are heavily outnumbered at present. It's vile for you while it lasts, but it will get better in time. Your boss will eventually either return to work or, if they are unfortunately unable to do so, will have to be replaced by your company, easing your burden. I would also recommend not suffering in silence at work. You are just one person, and you cannot reasonably be expected to do the work of two indefinitely. I don't know who you work for, but it sounds like a large company which can be both a blessing and a curse at times like these. I would urge you to politely discuss your concerns with HR / senior management, as otherwise they risk losing another employee through stress. You're not being a trouble-maker or unreasonable to point out of your increased workload is becoming unmanageable. They may be able to share some of your regular duties with other staff to help ease things, so I would strongly recommend talking to them. The other work issues you mentioned like the power cut and internet outage should hopefully not repeat (or at least, not soon!), and having to deal with a disciplinary will also hopefully not be a regular occurrence, so if things are really bad right now, look at it this way; from this point they can only get better, right?
I am also of course very sorry to hear about the death in your family. Please accept my sincere condolences. A loss like that can be devastating, and usually only time can truly help with the pain. I hope your remaining family and friends are being understanding and supportive, but you know what? You also have friends here on the Forum. I may not know you personally, but I'm sure we've all experienced rotten times in our lives when everything seemed to be going wrong at once, or we felt things were spinning out of our control, so we can certainly empathise with your situation. What I find often helps me when that sort if thing happens is talking about my problems, so you've done exactly the right thing by posting your message, and I thank you for doing so as it gives us, your fellow Vintage Star Wars enthusiasts, a chance to offer you emotional support and let you know that you're not alone

. I care about you, and I'm quite sure others do too, so feel free to respond to this message or not, to PM me or not, as you see fit, if you think it will help. We're here for you, if you need us
As for good news, it often seems that the media only ever reports doom and gloom, as that seems to be what grabs people's attention the most. However, there's good news all the time if you look for it. There was the terrific story just this week of the little 4 year-old girl who saved her mother's life by ringing 999 when she collapsed at home, and won a Pride of Britain award (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-41819949/pride-of-britain-awards-what-did-suzie-mccash-teach-prince-william). YouTube is awash with uplifting and heart-warming videos of random acts of kindness and real life heroes if you look for them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scs9NgcP2_Q), and they can inspire as well as help lift a heavy heart. On a personal level, although I have a few annoying health problems of my own at present, I'm not going to let them stop me continuing to work on the new display case I'm building at home, and I'm thankful that I have the ability and opportunity to do so, as no matter how bad our own problems may be, there are always people worse off than we are. That doesn't diminish or belittle our own problems, but it can help to put things into perspective sometimes.
I hope your various problems improve as quickly as possible and that you soon feel less burdened by them, but in the meantime please remember we are here for you and we give a damn about you
Kind regards,
Jeremy