The Give and Take of Grief

Grief doesn’t just show up after someone is gone—it begins in the waiting, in the witnessing, and in the quiet moments in between. In this deeply personal episode, I share the story of my grief as I walk alongside the final days of Roland Merrill, a man who was not my biological father, but who loved me and showed up for me like a dad.
I talk about what it means to grieve while someone is still here, how hospice changes time, and what it feels like to navigate love, loss, and family dynamics that make grief even more complex. I open up about the struggle of showing up for others while managing my own health and full-time life, and how this moment echoes the grief I felt after losing my grandpa in 2021—but with an intensity and surrealness all its own.
This episode is an offering—for anyone grieving, for anyone who’s ever felt alone in that grief, and for anyone learning to care for themselves in the midst of it.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-mariah-effect--5832015/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Mariah Effect. I'm Mariah.
Let's dive in. So for today's episode, I really want
to talk about something that might be a little bit sombering.
It might be a little bit complicated for some people
to listen to based on their own experiences, and so

(00:48):
I want to acknowledge that. Let everybody know that from
the jump, we are going to be talking about grief.
So if there's some things that that might bring up
for you right now, then maybe hold off on listening
to this. But I do think it's important, and I
do think that the way that I'm going to talk
about it will be hopefully helpful for anybody who's going

(01:11):
through this sort of thing. This whole podcast centers around
me trying to make the things that I go through
or the things in my life a little bit easier
for people to relate to and hopefully it helps them
in some way. Something that I say might impact the

(01:31):
way that they feel about something in their life. And
so that's what I want to get into today, and
I really want to be fully transparent and vulnerable, so
that might include some crying. Hopefully it won't be too much,

(01:58):
because I really don't want to have to edit this
too much, but yeah, I think that it's really important
to talk about this topic, which is grief, and I
think that it's something that affects everyone at some point
or another, something that we all experience, and this conversation

(02:22):
that we're going to get into is really about holding
space for it, and you know, keeping things open inside
of ourselves for that sadness that comes in, anger that

(02:43):
might pass through, and you know, the growth that can
happen going through this process as well. So I'm going
to come I'm going to come full circle with it,
you guys. Another thing is that with this grieving process,
I'm not the only person that's grieving in this particular situation,

(03:06):
and so there are a lot of people at my
house right now. So if you hear anything in the
background that I couldn't edit out, You're kind of just
gonna have to bear with it. You're gonna have to
bear with me on that because I there's only so
much that I can do with the sound, and I'm

(03:29):
not going to try and make sure that other people
are being more quiet so that I can do this.
It's just not the time to be asking that of
other people. So anyway, let's get into this. So first
I want to talk about why I'm grieving, like what

(03:51):
this situation is at least a little bit. Anybody that
has listened to the podcast already or knows me personally,
will know that I am living in Utah and at
I'm living at the Meryll's House, which is a family

(04:12):
that I've known for a very long time. I think
at this point it's been like fourteen years or so
that I've known them and loved them and everything, and
we've gotten to a place where I'm really just a
part of the family. It's a mutual feeling of love

(04:34):
and appreciation and care. And in that time that i've
been that i've known them through Mallory, who's my best friend,
I've really become ingratiated into their lives in a way

(05:01):
that it's kind of for anybody that lives here in
Utah especially, It's it's not even a question of if
I'm a part of the family or not. And so
we call each other, you know, I'm called a sister.
I call them sisters, brothers, mom, dad, And basically the

(05:23):
whole time that I've known Mallory and been a part
of this family. Her dad has gone through a lot
of medical issues. He's been very sick. I don't think
we're going to get into all the nitty gritty of that,
but suffice to say, this last visit to the hospital

(05:43):
brought some really harsh news that we were not necessarily
expecting in this way. But it has turned into cancer
that is in our ruble and he cannot do treatments

(06:05):
for it because his liver is at such a terrible
state because of some other medical reasons that have happened
in the last few years, and so there was really
nothing to be done. It's terminal, and we ended up

(06:27):
having to put him on hospice. So that's the reason
that I'm grieving. He is still here with us, which
is an interesting concept to be grieving before somebody is
even really gone, but it is a reality. It is real,
and when somebody is put on hospice, it is kind

(06:51):
of this weird process. It feels like it's going on
forever and way too fast. At the same time, I
think he's been on hospice now for for a week
and a few days now. He came home last week

(07:15):
on Wednesday, so yeah, it's been a week in a
couple of days. And I think that one of the
biggest things, the hardest things when someone that you love
is going through this, is seeing how it affects them,
seeing how it changes who they are. And so I

(07:35):
think what I'm grieving right now is the person that
he was even just a couple of weeks ago, and
it's just kind of this huge shift, and it's really hard.
He's the type of person that is so fun and
loving and caring and kind, and just all of this

(07:59):
sickness that he's been going through the last few years,
kind of alongside my own sickness, my own health issues,
it's just really changed a lot of the things that
I've known him to be for the entire time I've
known him. So it's it's a process trying to deal

(08:25):
with that sort of a thing, and I think that
it's interesting also. Two, I think for me, it's really
difficult to deal with any sort of tension. Like I'm
not very good at dealing with like confrontation or I

(08:54):
don't even know like how to explain this, but I'm
not very good when it comes to to people being
upset or people not sad. Necessarily, I can handle when
people are sad deal with things when people are generally upset,
but when people are very angry, or when people are

(09:16):
irritated by something, and I'm also feeling at the end
of my rope, at the end of my straw, whatever
you want to say. It's really difficult for me to
have the capacity to handle that or talk through that
with somebody's I have to kind of walk away, think

(09:38):
on it, and come back to it. And I think
right now everyone in this house, everyone coming to visit,
are just in the same place of not really being
able to have the bandwidth to deal with things outside
of their own expectations of what they want and what
that needs to be done. And so I I Am

(10:00):
having a very hard time with all of the tension
that's going on around me, and so it's just kind
of felt a little bit lonely. I think all of
the people that are coming by are you know, friends
of the family, are extended family members that either I've

(10:25):
met once or twice or I've never met before, and
so they don't necessarily know who I am or know
how ingratiated I am into the family, because it's not
the reality for them. So it's also really lonely because

(10:46):
I feel a little bit uncomfortable being out there and
around everybody, and it's not this time isn't about me,
So I have mostly been just not being out there
for the most part. I mean, in a lot of ways,
I've already said Mike goodbyes and things like that, so

(11:07):
I'm not bitter or anything about any of that. I
think they all deserve to say goodbye, and in a
lot of ways, it's a reminder of how many lives
that he touched in his life, and a reminder of
how kind and wonderful he is. I'm really appreciative of that.

(11:34):
So even if it might feel a little bit lonely
to me that I'm kind of sitting sitting in my
grief in this way, I think that it's okay to
feel that way, and it's okay that I just like

(12:00):
the time to take care of myself, which means I
do have to not be fully involved, just so that
I'm protecting my own, you know, my own mental health. Yeah.
I think another part of this is that I am

(12:20):
recognizing with all the people that are coming by just
how because in my head I have always felt like
there are different levels to grief, and that's based on
the relationship that you have with someone. I think that

(12:42):
people who are you know, really close to the person,
meaning you know they are there with them every day,
they spend a lot of time with them. They are
you know, son, daughter, brother, mother, mother, sister, that sort

(13:04):
of thing. You know, immediate family go through a different
experience than people who are like I don't know, second
cousin twice removed and friend from forty years ago. But
like being here and seeing how people are feeling about this,

(13:26):
I think that it's it might be a little different,
but I think that it's it can hit people just
as hard regardless of any of that. It's really based
on how much love there is in that relationship and
less about how close they might be, if that makes

(13:49):
any sense. And I think that that's something that I'm
actually learning for the first time, not because it didn't
make sense to me that that is the truth, but
because in my own family, I feel like anytime anybody
has passed away, and a lot of the people that

(14:15):
have been in my family have passed away very suddenly,
it's not been kind of a drawn out thing, at
least not in my experience. Maybe when I was younger
and I wasn't you know, fully paying attention to it.
It happened in a similar way, but with anybody I
loved or knew, it was a very quick thing in

(14:36):
my experience, and so I think that with certain people,
whenever I spent any time with them at all, I
was sad, and I definitely felt sad and confused for

(14:59):
a while, but I've really only been I think the
word is devastated when it's been somebody really close to me,
or somebody that's an immediate family kind of way, and
I just, yeah, it's a different experience to see it.

(15:23):
And I mean, I feel like this family here that
I love and I've been a part of for fourteen years,
it's just a different It's different their family and how
they love each other and the ways that they love
each other. And I think that might have something to

(15:44):
do with it. But it's been really hard to see
so many people that are going through such hard feelings
about this, and I don't know. It's also hard for

(16:04):
me because I'm empathetic and so I allow others feelings
to kind of add on to my own, which I
think is why I have a hard time with confrontation situations,
because those sorts of feelings and emotions also will latch

(16:25):
onto me, and that's difficult for me to navigate what
I'm supposed to do. Even with that, I mean, this
whole process of grief is completely unpredictable. I mean, we
have no idea what's going to happen from one minute
to the next with somebody's emotions. A lot of people
that have come through, a lot of the siblings that

(16:47):
are here are helping with different chores and different tasks,
which is something that I wish that I could participate
more fully in. But I just am still kind of
in a recovery period from everything that I've been going through.
I'm trying to build back my strength. And the way

(17:07):
that I set things up before all of this was
happening for myself was I had decided to go back
to school or back to school. I decided to go
back to work full time. And the reason that I
did that is because I assumed that I would have

(17:31):
basically all the time that I wasn't working as either downtime,
personal time, or if I was going to do something
to help the family, it would be you know, the
dishes and cleaning the kitchen when I or cooking dinner
and cleaning the kitchen while I did that, which is

(17:56):
kind of all I had the bandwidth for. And so
with all these people coming and helping doing several different
things around the house to help out, you know, Mom,
I feel so like terrible, like I'm in this position
where I can't help in the ways that I want to,

(18:17):
and I feel not embarrassed necessarily, but I feel hard
on myself about the fact that I can't do those
things and that I just feel a little bit stuck
with that. But I think in that I have to

(18:40):
work on recognizing, you know, my own self love in
that moment too, because other people might not understand or
recognize that about everything for me or be thinking about
that right now, because with everything else going on, who

(19:01):
is thinking about anybody else right Which is fine? But
I think I need to for myself ignore the outside
feelings or judgments about that and just focus on my
own truth on that and recognize and know that the

(19:25):
person that I care about how she feels about that
is Mom, because she's the one that they're doing all
these things for. And so I have already spoken to
her and we've talked about it about if she needs
something and it's something that is specific and she wants

(19:48):
me to do it, she has to ask me and
I will do it. And I think it is hard
for her to kind of ask people to do things
unless they offer. And I've been trying to offer when
I have the bandwidth, when I have the emotional stability
to do so. But the last few days have been

(20:09):
really hard. I've been really struggling in the last few days,
and I think that again, I just have to kind
of move through this and accept where I'm at and
how I'm dealing with it. I think that's the biggest thing.
And I think, like I was saying, this is such

(20:31):
an unpredictable time with our emotions, with how it's going
to affect us physically. I mean, I currently am going
through a loopus flare up, and I think a lot
of that has to do with the stress that I've
been feeling about everything and the grief that I'm going through.

(20:55):
I mean, I think that with people that don't have
a compromise immune system, grief affects them in a lot
of ways physically, with exhaustion, body aches like foggy brain,
difficult time with remembering personal needs such as eating, sleeping, showering,

(21:25):
all of those things kind of bleed into one another
and creating this, you know, creating this problem of not
really being able to provide for yourself but not really
recognizing that it's become a problem, or even if you do,
just kind of being like, well, there's nothing I can

(21:46):
do about it. It kind of is similar to the
reactions or the feelings that go into depression. I mean,
there's people that go through depressive episodes that just can
can't get out of bed, just can't take a shower.
It feels impossible. And I think that in a lot

(22:08):
of ways, it's something that you kind of just have
to move through it and get to the other side
of the episode. But that doesn't mean that it's going
to be gone, you know. So this is in a
similar vein. I think that we just have to be
understanding for ourselves and for others about what they can

(22:30):
and can't do. And I mean some people might seem
like they're fine and then in just a moment they
fully feel everything and it is an emotional toll. But again,
I think we just have to all, you know, make

(22:51):
room for all of the feelings. And there's so many
things that will pop up when you're grieving too. I mean,
this is a person that you love so much, and
you think about the what ifs of everything, right. You
think about like, dang, what if I hadn't gone on

(23:12):
that long trip a few weeks ago, or what if
I hadn't what if I had gone into his room
more often to just hug him and let him know
that I loved him? What if I had taken a
moment to listen to him tell me about stories from

(23:36):
his life. And I felt a lot of those things
when my grandpa passed away too, because we didn't have
like a very close relationship, especially you know, when I
was older, and so there's just so many things that
I wish I had asked him that I didn't because

(23:57):
I either thought that he he didn't want to talk
about it or that he would say things that I
didn't want to hear. But like after he passed away,
I was looking at photos of him and just was

(24:18):
overwhelmingly missing him because I was thinking about the what
ifs and feeling a regret is the most is like
the thing that I was trying to get to, which
is the regret of things that EWI didn't do or
things that could have happened. I feel like there's a

(24:42):
relationship that me and my grandpa could have had, and
I think that when I was grieving, that's what I
was grieving, was the relationship that could have been there.
And I think with this situation, it's more about the
things that I should have or could have done in
the past. And that's not even to try and take

(25:07):
away from the things that did happen, you know, the
things that we did experience together. I mean, he and
I went fishing when we were both so weak and
sick that we could barely stand for you know, ten minutes,
let alone the forty minutes that we stood in that

(25:30):
river to try and fish, and we didn't even get
any fish. We didn't get any bites or anything. But
it was so so good to spend that time together.
The times that we were cooking together in the kitchen,
the time that I wasn't living in the state and

(25:56):
had called him to say that I was coming to
visit and wanted a surprise Mallory, so I didn't want
him to tell her anything, and that I needed to
ride from the airport, and he did the whole thing
of making sure to record her reaction when he pulled
up to the airport so that he could say that

(26:19):
we would always have that video of her being really
excited and really surprised that I was there, and it
was a beautiful moment, and then we all went to
lunch together and it was wonderful. And there's so many
moments when I was growing up that he was there
for me when I was really struggling with things where

(26:41):
he just made me smile or laugh. And even now
he said same person in a way where he's trying
to make people laugh and showing love. I mean, it's
definitely fading a little bit, but it's still there in moments.

(27:04):
I mean, he's still drinking Monster, which is in some
ways very funny. But yeah, and I think that it's
really important to think about and acknowledge the things that

(27:28):
like grief gives to us, not just the things that
it's taking away, because I mean, this whole process is very,
very difficult, and I mean, this is how I'm feeling
and he hasn't even gone yet. But I think that

(27:54):
a lot of things I've learned in this process too,
is you know, the understanding that love and connection is
also stronger, Like there's tension, but these bonds that we
have with each other are so strong, and I think

(28:15):
that even though it's kind of testing that to make
sure that it's strong, like we're definitely winning that battle,
and I think it's testing just to prove how strong
it is, if that makes any sense to anybody. And

(28:35):
I think that all of us are, in our own ways,
you know, at terms with the fact that this is happening.
I mean, he's been suffering for so long that even
though we're all very sad that he's leaving us, there
is that also silver lining of you know, he's not

(28:59):
going to be in pain and more, which I think
is relief for all of us. Lost kind of shapes
the way we show up for others as well as
for ourselves. It gives us a chance to not prove
ourselves necessarily, but gives us a chance to see what

(29:24):
we're made of a little bit. And for some of us,
there's going to be low moments where it feels like
we're not made of anything, that we're just paper in
the wind. But I think that it also gives us
the chance to show that like we're stronger than we

(29:45):
think we are, we are more love than we may
be recognized and it's it's sad and it's wonderful at
the same time. Is my main takeaway with grief. There's

(30:07):
no just getting over this. It's something that you have
to move through. It's something that you have to move
with and kind of carry out until it kind of
comes to its own conclusion, and it's something that will

(30:29):
follow you forever for that particular person. I mean, there's
still moments that I struggle with remembering my grandpa, Like
remembering specific things about my grandpa will make me tear up.
I think for my mom, especially who didn't necessarily have

(30:51):
an amazing relationship with her father either, she still will
have really strong emotions and feelings about things with him.
And I think that this is just something that we

(31:13):
all have to hold space for and be there for
each other for. And I think one of the biggest
things that comes with this too is thinking about what
we're going to do in the after this year. I

(31:33):
was planning to go to Italy in October, and it's
something that part of me was really struggling with making
the plans for it because it's so expensive to do
this and I just felt like, well, what if I

(31:54):
need to use that money for something else. What if
I go on the trip and it's amazing and wonderful,
which I'm sure it will be, but then I come
home and I am like, dang, I should have used
that money for this thing or that thing or whatever.
And I think all of this has made me decide
and really feel cemented in the fact that, like, I'm

(32:16):
not going to push aside the things that I want
to do anymore. Even with my own sickness, I think
I've definitely had to realize and recognize that there's not
any reason to push aside my plans. There's not a

(32:38):
reason for me to put off the things that I
want or the ways that I want to do things,
or my creative interests or anything like that. There's no
point in waiting for things to happen. I have to
make them happen. And this whole experience has reminded me

(33:02):
of that very strongly. I think that for anybody that
is going through grief right now, or has gone through grief,
or will eventually go through grief, because it is an
eventuality of life, there's definitely support out there for you,

(33:28):
whether it's through loved ones or therapy or your own
personal rituals or celebrations or habits that you have to
help you move through this time. Definitely lean on that,

(33:56):
give yourself the space to ask for help if you
need it. And I think I want to also remind
everybody that you are not alone. Even if you are
the only person who is losing someone in your life

(34:19):
and you have a very small circle. Everyone has a circle.
Whether you acknowledge it or recognize it, you do. And
if you feel like you don't, please reach out to
me and I'll be that person for you. I'll be

(34:41):
there for you. And I just want to take a
second to acknowledge my gratitude for Roland Merrill, a person
that I love very much. I'm going to remember everything
that you taught me and I'm going to love you forever.
Thank you so much for listening, and I will see

(35:04):
you next time. Bye.