When a loved one dies

Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love
by Sarah Leavitt

Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024
$27.95 / 9781551529516

Reviewed by Jessica Poon

*

Everybody is conspiring to make me a Buddhist, or at the very least, to try meditation. It is, after all, easier to blandly prescribe meditation than to say, I find you deficient of many good qualities. I have not been meditating. But I have had people around me die and I never seem to know what to do. Somehow, life goes on.

There’s the realization that even if you come across the perfect meme for the dead person, they will never see it. The dead person is irrevocably gone. Once in a while, you may be consoled that loved ones are only dead when no one remembers them—that we will join them, in death. Your spirituality mileage may vary here. You may marvel at your own capacity to go on, if that says something about you. What if you don’t cry and tears are the only measurable symptom of appropriate sadness? Should you cut onions or violently rip out a nose hair to induce tears? Would anyone know the difference? Or perhaps you will feel isolated by everyone else seemingly moving on, tearlessly paying taxes, the only other thing guaranteed in life. Mostly, though, we strenuously avoid thinking about death.

Something, Not Nothing, is an emotionally evocative graphic novel by Sarah Leavitt, who writes and illustrates her experience of grief after her partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, chose a medically assisted death. Leavitt writes, understatedly: “After her death, I continued living, which surprised me.”

The path to finding a physician who will agree to a medically assisted death is not immediately smooth. The first doctor does not feel Donimo’s pain meets the requirements of being “reasonably foreseeable,” a criterion apparently not met by Donimo, who has “had chronic pain, nausea and exhaustion … in her teens … was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis), POTS (postural orthostastic tachycardia syndrome), … and had permanent injuries from car accidents. Another doctor mentions her religious beliefs are disharmonious with medically assisted dying. The doctor who ends up agreeing to the procedure describes their relationship as beautiful—an accurate, touching sentiment, but one that reminds the author how much there is to lose. Leavitt writes about her hope that Donimo’s choice was more about having the option, rather than actually going through with it once it was possible. But Donimo does go through with her decision. And Leavitt, as she writes in the beginning, continues to live.

From the onset, Leavitt is dynamic with her judiciously sporadic use of all caps (e.g. “WHAT WAS SHE THINKING WHEN”), incomplete questions, black and white, and vibrant watercolours. On the second page, the word “grievous” is rendered in multiple ways: oriented sideways, all lowercase cursive, all caps in a bottom right corner, as “grievous” with a truncated g, and then as part of a sentence without a full stop. On page seventeen, Leavitt writes: “How do you use words for this? … How? How words?” Then: “Maybe can’t.” Ironically, the inadequacy of articulating grief with words, is conveyed quite well here—heartbreakingly so.

Donimo has not only left behind Leavitt, but also their dog. Leavitt writes: “He and I had survived a most terrible thing and he pooped and I picked it up just like always and then we ran.” Is it cruel or kind that life goes on after death? Death is ordinary. More poop will follow.

Leavitt excels at meta-writing and depicts the difficulty of articulating grief in ways that convey the sheer magnitude. She doesn’t shy away from writing about intermittent resentment, e.g. “Why did you let me fall in love you with / Why did you love me back / Why / Why did you leave me here.” The absence of a question mark feels emphatically urgent, angry, and achingly sad. Leavitt’s sense of humour shines when she draws “A scientifically accurate visual representation of the Grief Journey.” It is worth paying attention to when Leavitt decides to employ colour and to invoke nature.

I was impressed with how Leavitt found so many ways to convey her grief. And yet, at the same time, she has created a life-affirming, deeply affectionate, intermittently humorous evocation of grief that reminds us that the ones we love are still with us, if we remember them. In Leavitt’s words: “I think it’s the continuing that matters.” And we do.

*

Originally from East Vancouver, Jessica Poon is a writer, former line cook, and pianist of dubious merit who recently returned to BC after completing a MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. [Editor’s note: Jessica interviewed Sheung-King, and recently reviewed books by Jeff Dupuis and A.G. Pasquella, Angela Douglas, Zazie Todd, Holly Brickley, Alastair McAlpine, and Jack Wang for The British Columbia Review.]

*

The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster