Stories of Illness Week 8 Response: Comic of Witnessed Health Narrative (Dado My Grandma)

For this week I did not want to focus on my ailment instead I wanted to tackle a different and more difficult subject, the death of my grandmother from cancer.

I ran into issues while attempting this piece namely trying to draw my grandmother and myself in cartoon form. As someone who suffers from body image, I decided to take an abstract approach. I drew us in the only thing I enjoy drawing, squiggly lines. With character design settled the next problem was picking what events to draw. I decided to take the point of view of myself as a child as I saw my grandmothers struggle with cancer. This was incredibly difficult because as a child I did not know what was happening to her and her death was sudden and caught everyone completely off guard and I wanted to convey that through the comic.

This was the single most difficult assignment so far because it took so much of me emotionally, first to decide on this tragedy, then to recall events, and finally to draw it. By the time I finished, I was mentally winded. I don't even know if any of the images convey any sense of meaning.

Dado-my comic about my grandmother