Grieving is a deeply personal experience that manifests in different ways for everyone. Some people laugh through their tears, while others couldn’t laugh to save their life, but the hard truth remains: Everyone is going to experience loss.
To help prepare for the inevitable — be it losing a loved one or your own eventual passing — filmmakers Meghan and Justin Ross made “How We Grieve,” a “traumedy” documentary series that explores the various ways people mourn those who move on first, while helping all of us ready ourselves for our own “turn in the urn.” Mixing comedy with earnest discussions of death, the series visits comedy shows hosted in funeral homes and talks to end-of-life doulas at death-themed film festivals, all to get people talking “about the stuff no one else (especially [our] Arab family) wants to talk about.”
Rachel Bloom, the “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” creator and star, is onboard as an executive producer. She recently tackled the topic of mortality with her own stage show, “Death, Let Me Do My Show,” which toured the country from 2022-2023 and then developed into a Netflix comedy special, “Death, Let Me Do My Special.”
Bloom previously worked with the Rosses on a short they made in 2020, but the parties never met in person due to pandemic restrictions. They stayed in touch over social media until “How We Grieve” presented another opportunity to collaborate.
“I knew she had toured with a comedy special that addresses the grief she experienced from the loss of her writing partner early on in the pandemic, so I reached out to see if she’d be interested in supporting as a mentor/EP,” Meghan Ross said in a statement. “She was kind enough to respond quickly to request the pilot link, and then followed up to say she’s down to support it!”
The Ross siblings’ previous short films have been featured in The New Yorker and nominated for Webby Awards. On May 28, Meghan will be in Austin, Texas at the ATX TV Festival to participate in a panel called “The PBS Process,” which takes “a look through the lens of PBS as a powerful platform to tell stories in a variety of formats and showcase local and regional storytelling to audiences near and far.
The filmmakers are actively raising funds for a second season, after many of the organizations and nonprofits they partnered with in the past were impacted by the Trump administrations’ cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts. To learn more about the project and donate, visit their fundraising page.
Watch the trailer for “How We Grieve” below. Season 1 will premiere on PBS in October. Visit the ATX TV Festival’s official site for ticket and badge information.
