Rosalie Lightning: A Graphic Journey through Grief

by Annesha Palit

Writing often aids in dealing with complex emotions, but it undeniably remains one of the most difficult and purging activities when it comes to expressing something as intimate as the death of a child. Tom Hart does a beautiful job in using this creative process to portray and reflect on his grief from his child’s death and comes up with a soul-stirring autobiographical memoir called Rosalie Lightning. Originally published in 2016 (paperback in July 2025), the black-and-white memoir documents the immediate and consequent actions of Tom Hart and his wife Leela’s, post the unfortunate demise of their two-year-old daughter, Rosalie. The book spans across multiple geographical and psychological terrains, taking the readers into a wild journey that is bound to tug at their heart strings long after one finishes the book.

Before the narrative in the book begins, sprawled across a page is a touching foreword by Lucy Knisley who had just become a parent when the book was first released. She talks about the gripping fear a parent can have, especially when they’ve just taken on the role, and further goes on to express the role of comics in expressing something as intense and wounding as grief. The foreword performs a dual role here — while it offers the first glimpse into the trauma and loss that the book delves into, it also lays the foundation for viewing art as an indispensable part in processing difficult phases of life — something that Tom Hart returns to time and again in this memoir. In the “Author’s note”, he writes,

“As early as seven years old, comics was the way I sorted out the messy, confusing world of emotions. Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts showed me the way: high emotions contained in little boxes. Emotions contained, examined, combined” (unpaginated).

Perhaps that stands as an evident rationale when he chooses Hayao Miyazaki’s film My Neighbor Totoro to make an appearance right at the beginning of the book. The motif of the oak tree and acorns comes up at multiple places in the narrative and forms a bridge between the Rosalie’s fancies and the future she doesn’t live to see. Every time Hart and his wife Leela are pictured collecting acorns, something that Rosalie loved to do, it reminds the readers of the attempt at conjoining their corporeal action with the weight that their hearts struggle to carry. After Rosalie’s demise, the acorns become her souvenirs to Hart and Leela, and every time they notice those, a part of their emotional reality comes back. Another instance of conjoining the physical reality with the painful emotional reality takes place while Hart enlists the “Images you’ll get used to while grieving your lost child” (10) and shows his own self and Leela on the ground trying to make sense of the world. The book gives us a constant sense that the journeys that Hart and Leela take have something to do with evading familiar spaces, but more so, to evade the void that they carry with them wherever they go. At various instances in the novel, Hart tries to reconcile with the untimely, painful death through myths and through his engagement in everyday rituals and practices and travels. An example of the mythic entanglement comes up prominently when Hart and Leela are so overcome with grief that they want to travel to the underworld to meet their child. One panel describes Hart’s desires thus: “Whatever it takes. I should be working to get her back. Crawl into the afterlife and bring her back with us”(138). While on one hand it shows a realistic estimation of the intense longing that they have towards Rosalie, it also reminds one of the Greek myths of Orpheus and Eurydice, where the former travels to the underworld to find the latter, charming Persephone and Hades to get her back. Another mythic undertone cuts across later when Hart and Leela are present at Kate and Lisa’s, during a lunar eclipse. Lisa is an old friend of Leela’s mother who had lost her 13-year-old daughter Tara in a car accident. Staying there, Hart notices the lunar eclipse and the readers notice the symbolic play of light and darkness signals the metaphorical eclipse overshadowing the couple’s happiness, expanding their personal grief to a cosmic phenomenon that echoes a similar, grim sentiment.

The memoir does a great job in keeping the readers hooked to the narrative through the constant oscillation between the past and the present. The physical journeys often lead to emotional ones where Rosalie makes a guest appearance in all her glorious, idiosyncratic whims and fancies. These guest appearances crop up without a warning, as haphazard as people’s memory, especially when Hart and Leela are grieving. Dreams are often interspersed with the narrative, which makes it a brilliant portrayal of human consciousness. In fact, the way Hart knits the narrative’s fabric with thoughts, dialogues, dreams, memories, he might be putting forth an example of a graphic memoir that makes an exceptional use of the stream of consciousness mode. Especially with the mythic undertones that run throughout the novel, the narrative takes the readers deep into the consciousness of every parent like Hart who searches desperately for something that can help make sense of the real world he lives in.

A unique selling point of the book is the presence of humor that intensifies the pain. Dark humor is placed strategically in nooks and corners where it impacts readers but doesn’t take away from the magnitude of grief. One such event comes up when Hart says, “I tell Leela I have to get up. My horizontal body is sadder than my vertical one” (154). Another instance of the uncomfortable humor comes up when he goes on to deposit the check for his apartment sale. The sale had been initiated while Rosalie was alive, and by the time it went through after several hurdles, Rosalie had died. At the bank, when the teller enquires about the large sum, Hart says, “It’s a booby price for losing my daughter” (173). One of the books which is referred to at multiple places is Louis: Night Salad, a book Rosalie loved to listen to over and over. Towards the end, Hart asks,  “how does Louis [the book] end?” (236), which again comes up as a reminder of Rosalie’s demise. The cartoonish figures help maintain a semblance of humor, especially when the narrative steers into tragic memories but the pain remains at the forefront as an integral part of their healing journey. Hart begins with drawing himself ragged and in short, straight strokes, but gradually turns towards blunt, cartoonish silhouettes as he goes on.

Structurally, the book might be a little difficult to follow for some readers. The narrative voice even though predominantly Hart’s, sometimes shifts to Rosalie’s voice. In the panel where it says, “Now it’s mommy and daddy who have to be careful” (29), one finds a sudden shift that might sound abrupt for some readers. Added to the intensely charged narrative content is the erratic presence of panels and dialogues and blank spaces, that might either pause or slow down the pace. Some pages are painted just black with no figures or blobs or dialogues, especially preceding some emotionally loaded panels. In my observation, the black pages serve as a time and a memory lapse taking the readers to the past before each section begins. In the panels, the black pages are often placed where dread comes most intensely, right when the realization hits: having to live in a world which no longer holds space for your child. Some places in the narrative, like in section V, and immediately after Rosalie’s death, the pages are filled with blobs here and there, with no order or structured panel. Especially in places like the picture of a cosmic cycle (156), the absence of order gives a sense of the cosmic entropy, far beyond the comprehension of human beings. At a deeper, more personal level, it also seems to symbolize the haphazard process of grieving, and the non-linear cycle of emotional rumination.

While the novel primarily deals with the irreversible loss that the couple goes through, it also touches upon several macroscopic issues prevalent in the modern-day America. In panels where they talk about New York, Hart represents it in the form of a hideous, giant rodent. In one of the panels present early in the novel, Hart writes in three separate boxes, “The New York arc requires you to either make exponentially more money – or get out. Where is up to you: New Jersey, Long Island or Westchester, all of which require you to ruthlessly keep your attention, money, and nerves focused on New York… Whose bloody, swollen, billboard eyes remain fixed on you in return” (34). The tone is sharp, the criticism direct. The predatory giant rat that New York is in Hart’s eyes preys on the couple through the bureaucratic entrapment that delays their house sale and keeps them stressed and broke for a long time.

Hart being an illustrator and educator himself drops excerpts and thoughts about art and literature that gives him solace. and adds to the creative intertextuality of Rosalie Lightning. In the initial pages when Hart writes, “I look for help in art and images. Wondering what’s going on in my brain…”(13), the creation of an overarching theme verbalizes, one that reveals art’s assistance in grief and trauma processing. Hart goes on to mention Roland Barthes, Metaphrog, Miyazaki’s movie Ponyo, Gustave Verbeek’s upside-down comics, Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy, to name a few, adding to the memoir’s creative intertextuality while establishing how all of them spoke differently and yet so intimately to him in the face of loss.

All in all, the novel reveals a very personal journey, but also speaks out to every couple whose child has died or is grieving. In Hart and Leela we find an everyman who strives to survive despite the heart-breaking event(s) life throws at them. Creatively, a couple of instances are bound to linger with the readers long after they turn the pages – whether it’s the clever wordplay with “grave- grief- grieve” or the piercing revelation that Hart’s personal ID for the ATM was “Rosalie”. Throughout their journey from Brooklyn … Mexico … Gainesville … Hawaii, we see the couple taking one step at a time, moment by moment, with their resilience for themselves and their empathy for others intact. The novel succeeds in leaving one with a slight bit of a heartache, and with questions about life, death and the love that goes beyond these boundaries.

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Annesha Palit is a PhD student and a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of English at University of Florida. She holds a double master’s in English Literature and Human Sciences, from BHU and IIT Bombay (India) respectively. She’s a gold medalist, a passionate emcee, a teacher, a doom scroller, a Hindustani classical singer, and a Bollywood gossip buff. Her research interests dabble between Disability Studies, Childhood Studies, and pedagogy.