How I Coped with the Death of My Partner of 22 Years

An excerpt from graphic memoir 'Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love' by Sarah Leavitt

Excerpted with permission from graphic memoir Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love by Sarah Leavitt (Arsenal Pulp Press).

About the book:

A poignant graphic memoir about the power of art to transform and heal after the death of a loved one

In April 2020, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt's partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. About a month after Donimo's death, Sarah began making comics again as a way to deal with her profound sense of grief and loss. The comics started as small sketches but quickly transformed into something totally unfamiliar to her. Abstract images, textures, poetic text, layers of watercolor, ink, and colored pencil—for Sarah, the journey through grief was impossible to convey without bold formal experimentation. She spent two years creating these comics.

The result is Something, Not Nothing, an extraordinary book that delicately articulates the vagaries of grief and the sweet remembrances of enduring love. Moving and impressionistic, Something, Not Nothing shows that alongside grief, there is room for peace, joy, and new beginnings.

Sarah Leavitt is the author of the graphic memoir Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me (Skyhorse Publishing, 2012), which is currently in production as a feature-length animation, and the award-winning historical fiction comic Agnes, Murderess(Freehand Books, 2019). She is an assistant professor in the School of Creative Writing at UBC in Vancouver, BC, where she has developed and taught undergraduate and graduate comics classes since 2012.