Finding a New Normal: One Mother’s Journey Through the Unimaginable Pain of Loss and Radical Acceptance
Back when the dinosaurs roamed the plains, or so it felt at the time, Rachel Abugov took a course in Developmental Psychology. During her studies, she learned that each stage of human life comes with certain prescribed tasks that must be accomplished as part of personal growth and psychological maturity. According to the textbook theories of her mid-thirties self, seniors were tasked with a particularly sobering assignment: accepting and learning to live with profound loss.
At the time, the concept felt entirely alien. Abugov could not even begin to imagine what such a burden would feel like, viewing it as the worst possible fate for an older adult. Unfortunately, time has a way of turning abstract academic concepts into lived reality. Today, Abugov finds herself navigating the early, jagged stages of that exact developmental milestone, following a devastating series of family tragedies that unfolded at the start of the year.
In January, Abugov experienced the loss of her son, Kevin, who passed away at the age of 43 after a relentless battle with cancer. Just ten weeks later, she suffered the loss of her only brother, Ian. While she had previously learned how to process the passing of her parents years prior—accepting those events as part of the natural order of life—the loss of a child and a sibling shatters any predictable timeline of grief.
Before the illness took hold, Abugov and her son shared a lighthearted, humorous dynamic. They frequently joked about her eventually becoming a crotchety old lady whom he would simply have to tolerate. In response to the running joke, Kevin bought her a t-shirt featuring Sophia from The Golden Girls and routinely sent her nostalgic internet memes of the famous "Where’s the beef?" commercial lady.
Those moments of levity were eventually overtaken by a ruthless adversary. Cancer emerged like a Trojan horse, attacking her son quietly and systematically from the inside. Abugov soon found herself thrust into an exhausting crash course in oncology, learning the complex medical terminology of chemotherapy, understanding both common and rare side effects, and exhaustively searching for potential clinical trials that might offer a glimmer of hope.
The battle culminated in a sterile emergency room, where an ER doctor delivered the devastating news with blunt finality: "He’s not going to make it. He’s dying." In that fraction of a second, Abugov was tasked with an impossible duty—breaking the news to her extended family and, worst of all, making the phone call to her daughter-in-law, who was at home with a sleeping grandson, informing her that she was only hours away from becoming a widow.
Abugov never learned to come to terms with the disease that consumed her son. She maintained a fierce, unwavering hope, fervently praying that Kevin would somehow be cured and discharged from the overcast, clinical realm of treatment into the brilliant sunshine of recovery. The sun continues to rise and shine today, but her son is no longer around to experience it. She notes that it is a haunting coincidence that the exact day Kevin learned his time on Earth was severely limited was also the day a major solar eclipse darkened the sky. Although they had purchased special viewing glasses, they never had the chance to use them; they didn’t need to. Their entire world simply went pitch-dark and stayed that way.
Despite the heavy shadow of illness, there were still pockets of joy and normalcy in those final chapters. Kevin managed to play his last two live gigs with his punk rock band, and the family gathered to celebrate her grandson’s first birthday. Just two weeks before Kevin passed away, he, his wife, and Abugov went out for lunch at one of their favorite Vietnamese restaurants. Over bowls of pho, they eagerly discussed plans to see the latest Superman movie and debated which television shows were worth binge-watching next.
It felt entirely like old times, provided one deliberately ignored the context: the restaurant had been specifically chosen because it was wheelchair-accessible, and Kevin was eating very lightly because chemotherapy had severely impacted his digestive system. They masked their raw emotions, smiled across the table, and pretended that everything was fine. They even discussed when they would get together next and which restaurant they would try for their next lunch outing. Naturally, there was no next time.
In the wake of these compounded losses, Abugov has sought out various avenues of support to help her process the grief. She has participated in numerous support groups, both in-person and online, while leaning heavily on cherished family members. Among her most vital lifelines has been her local chapter of The Compassionate Friends, an organization that brings together parents who have experienced the death of a child. Even though their formal meetings only last an hour and a half each month, the connections forged there are invaluable. To Abugov, the members are true "foxhole buddies" who genuinely understand the singular, isolating landscape of child loss.
Along this difficult journey, Abugov has also acquired an unexpected companion: Grief. While not a traditional best friend, Grief shadows her as persistently as her cat, Monty, whenever she approaches the kitchen cabinet where the treats are kept. In Abugov’s mind’s eye, Grief resembles an eccentric older lady—the kind who overcompensates for lost youth by wearing purple cat-eye glasses and an abundance of leopard print, ensuring she is easily recognized.
Not all of Abugov’s emotional responses are quite so considerate or easy to categorize. Acting on the advice of her bereavement counselor, she has been working hard to properly label her complex emotions, though that remains an ongoing process. Grief frequently makes her presence known at the most unexpected times, such as when Abugov experiences a sudden emotional meltdown in the potato chip aisle at Walmart, struck by the sudden, agonizing realization that she can no longer pick up Sriracha chips because Kevin is gone.
Grief attempts to comfort her through these sudden collapses, gently whispering about accepting a "New Normal." She tells Abugov that every person eventually walks around with a metaphorical stone in their shoe—an irritation that cannot be shaken out, no matter how hard one tries. At first, Abugov’s immediate reaction was sheer disbelief, but as she began opening up and talking to others, she realized just how widely this specific kind of grief is shared among the people around her.
Initially, Abugov’s internal response to her persistent companion was defensive and hostile. "Look, Grief. I don’t wanna hang out with you! Leave me alone," she recalls thinking, usually garnished with a generous sprinkling of frustration and profanity. However, she quickly realized that she was expending an immense amount of physical and emotional energy fighting against Grief—energy that drained what little reserves she had left in her tank.
Faced with this exhaustion, Abugov pivoted toward a strategy of radical acceptance. She wondered what might happen if she simply stopped fighting, sat down on the couch right next to Grief, and allowed the companion to quietly hand her tissue after tissue while she sobbed and openly mourned the losses of her son and her brother. Could it possibly help? After all, she reasoned, she couldn’t possibly feel any worse than she already did.
To her initial surprise, the psychological experiment worked. Much like a chef’s trick of soaking raw onions in cold water to decrease their pungency, Grief began to lose her sharpest, most painful edges. Abugov wasn’t exactly rolling out the welcome mat for her uninvited guest, but she was resisting her presence far less intensely. Perhaps she was finally beginning to come to terms with her New Normal, or perhaps her pain was simply shifting from the sharp agony of acute grief into a more manageable, chronic state. Regardless of the exact mechanism, the pain remained, but the day-to-day experience of it had fundamentally changed.
As a result, Abugov spends far fewer days trapped in bed, mindlessly doomscrolling through her phone. She has always been an early riser, and she still is—though now she identifies just as strongly as a "mourning person" as she does a "morning person." Honoring her lost loved ones no longer looks like lying in bed with the lights dimmed in perpetual sorrow. Instead, it can look like hopping on a plane with her niece to attend a music festival because Kevin and Ian’s favorite bands are playing, and wearing their old t-shirts so they remain present in some tangible form.
The bottom line, as Abugov has come to understand, is that Grief is here to stay. She will remain a part of her identity for as long as she walks the Earth. And when her own time on this planet eventually comes to an end, she figures she will ask Grief to serve as a faithful shadow to everyone who loved her in return. It is undeniably a tough job, but as Abugov has learned firsthand, somebody has to do it.
