Bode Miller Cries Over Daughter’s Drowning, Bonds With ‘Special Forces’ Co-Star Kelly Rizzo Over Grief

Bode Miller and Kelly Rizzo are bonding over their shared experiences. On the latest episode of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, the 45-year-old Olympic skier and the 44-year-old travel blogger spoke about losing a loved one. Miller’s daughter, Emmy, died in a 2018 drowning accident, while Rizzo’s husband, Bob Saget, died last year after sustaining head trauma.

“I have a 1-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl and then five boys in between. My daughter would’ve been sandwiched right in between those, the one that passed away,” Miller told his castmates, before recounting how his daughter died.

“Drowned. Nineteen months. It was brutal. Let herself out the back door and just jumped right into our neighbor’s pool,” he said as he wiped away tears, before noting of grief, “It does not go away.”

Rizzo soon began crying and told Miller, “It’s such a weird thing that I never knew until you grieve, that you feel guilty for feeling happy. Or even if you have a moment of happiness, you’re like, ‘Oh my god. Am I going to get judged for feeling happy? I shouldn’t feel happy.'”

“It’s so conflicting,” Miller agreed. “It’s one of the strangest things.”

In a confessional, Rizzo told the cameras, “I lost Bob last year, and it has changed me in so many ways. To have gone through that trauma, it doesn’t really get worse than that.”

Miller, in a confessional of his own, explained, “I would say grief is probably the most effective at screwing you up. When the worst possible thing you can imagine happens, you have to celebrate that you made it through. It’s wrong to say you find a silver lining, but you manage, you continue.”

Later in the episode, as Miller was preparing to dive backward into dark, open water, he explained how his daughter’s death helped his relationship with water.

“I think I was ignorant and had not enough respect or not enough awareness or knowledge about it before, and now I think I have the fear and respect for it, but you have to know how to manage it,” he said. “I think talking to kids about mental toughness or the ability to overcome grief is one thing, but to show them is a different thing. My kids need to see it.”

When ET spoke with Rizzo in June, she spoke about her life more than a year after Saget’s death.

“I’m doing OK. It’s a journey,” she said. “… I’m just living in my world of gratitude. I’m just grateful for life now, and the life that I had, and the life that Bob and I shared. I’m just grateful for all that.”

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