San Roque originally started as a short comic I would doodle shortly after my friend, Isabel, passed in 2022. A wolf and a coyote, hanging out and getting into stupid antics. Nothing super interesting but something I wanted to develop, and eventually I changed them to just normal dogs and made it a story that leaned more into my grief. I didn’t want to write a narrative that just says, grief goes away or that grief is awful! It’s just about living with grief and all the various ways I felt with it. Grief can linger on you for days, months, and years. I would have times where I would work on this project, and grief would seize my body from doing proper work. I couldn’t move and I couldn’t think right. And my mind would just fog. But I wanted to create some positivity around it. Maybe for myself. Maybe for the others around me. That’s what I hoped to accomplish in my writing of this.

This story was written out of love and pain. And that is how my life has been. There are ups and downs. And there are times where I remember the happiest days, then there are times where I feel devastation run down my spine. But I want to continue on! I want to do things that remind me of those happy moments and especially of my friend. She was my biggest supporter as well as my biggest inspiration, and I want to make things that she would absolutely of loved to have seen. It can make my day just a bit brighter to think of how she would react to my work.

I hope you enjoy San Roque!

A picture Isabel drew of Roy in 2021 :)