How We Grieve Goes Inside Our Least Favorite Emotion

Gelotti Ice Cream in Paterson, New Jersey, sits about as close to a cemetery as an ice cream shop can get. Meghan and Justin Ross know. They grew up visiting both. “If you’re paying your respects and burying a loved one, you might as well top it off with a cold treat,” Justin figures.

The Syrian American siblings’ return to those spaces opens their upcoming docuseries, How We Grieve. Premiering on Austin PBS Oct. 13, the travel show-inspired series is a wide-ranging exploration of the ways people help themselves and others cope with death. But if this already sounds too depressing, don’t be deceived. The joke-cracking, goofball co-hosts – Meghan and Justin – never make it feel like a funeral.

The indie filmmaker duo are well aware they aren’t experts on processing grief. The recent passing of their aunts, Dawn and MaryKay, still sticks with them. It’s actually what inspired the series. How We Grieve isn’t the filmmakers’ first attempt at making something inspired by that loss, but they say it’s the first project that actually succeeds in tackling their grief head-on. “It really forced us to kind of confront what we had been sort of avoiding,” Meghan says.

In each half-hour episode, the creators set out to fill the show with people who create accessible spaces to confront grief, while hopefully learning some things themselves. They were happily surprised by the personalities of those they spoke with. “I expected people in that space to be kind of depressing and brooding,” Meghan confesses, “but they’re actually the most joyful, happy, kind people I’ve met.” 

Case in point: comedian Ben Wasserman. Combine a litany of clever DIY props, eccentric comedy, a funeral home, and lots of trauma, and you have “Live After Death,” Wasserman’s live show about grief and loss. Featured in How We Grieve’s first episode, the New York-based comic’s act delves into his own experience of losing loved ones and gives audience members a safe space to share their own stories. With a comedy background of her own, Meghan is also familiar with finding the humor in tragedy. “Two things can be true. You can be sad, and you can also think something is really funny in the same breath,” she says.

Austin-based artist Allie Garcia processes her grief through visual art. In the third and final episode of the season, the hosts attend Garcia’s grief art class. With a warm, comforting presence she guides them through the creation of homemade nichos – shadow boxes filled with pictures and objects related to the deceased. Justin made one dedicated to Aunt MaryKay, and Meghan to Aunt Dawn. Coaching her students, Garcia stresses that the only way to go beyond grief is through it.

“It’s not a matter of rejecting these emotions, it’s just allowing yourself to be a part of it,” she advises. “It’s hard to say it’s beautiful because it doesn’t feel that way when you’re feeling it, but just processing [grief], there’s beauty in that.”

How We Grieve – which will see another season once they find the funding – aims to prove that the only wrong way to grieve is to not grieve at all. As far as the creators’ personal goal of conquering the grief left behind by the deaths of their aunts, that’s a little more complicated.

“It doesn’t make you miss them any less,” Justin says. “[But] I think in a really interesting way it has helped. I’m very confident that they are proud of us and would just love this project.”

This article appears in October 2 • 2026.