Losing masks when merging layers

Hey guys,
So I have been trying to learn to be as non destructive as possible... one problem Ive recently had is that when I try to merge layers, I will lose the mask that was on one of the layers. How do I prevent this? :/
Cheers!!

One small note:  Every selection specifically is 8 bits/channel no matter what the document depth.  I say this because selection masks are always provided to plug-ins in 8 bits/channel format.
So my point is that if you're editing deep (e.g., 16 bits/channel) image data, and whatever workflow you're using uses a selection as part of it, you will have quantized the data to 8 bits at some point.
You can prove this to yourself if you're skeptical...  Make a radial pure grayscale gradient in a 16 bits/channel document.  Then control-click on one of the color channels to make it a selection, and Save the selection in a channel.  Now Copy the data from that channel and paste it over the original gradient as a new RGB layer.  Set it to Difference blending and greatly enhance the brightness of the differences...
-Noel

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