This notebook story brought tears to my eyes:

On his 54th birthday, TV animation director Gary Andrews started a Doodle Diary. This still-ongoing project is simple, but it has proved powerful over the past year; he chronicles his day in a sketch. When he first began the endeavor, Andrews often depicted his life as a happily married man, enjoying the world with his wife Joy and their two young kids. But now, it’s a different story. Joy suddenly passed away on October 27, 2017, from multi-organ failure caused by sepsis. Andrews was on a business trip at the time and was unable to say goodbye to his wife before she died.

With Joy’s passing, the Doodle Diary changed overnight. Although Andrews missed drawing on the date his wife died, he was back to sketching the next day. He used the notebook as an outlet to channel his feelings and poured his emotions onto paper. “I was crying so hard it was difficult to focus on the page,” Andrews recalls. “I was drawing through tears.”

Read more: Animator’s Poignant Doodle Diary Keeps His Wife’s Memory Alive