All this talk about handwriting... you never know...

I was talking with some friends today about handwriting, how most people no longer write anything by hand, and if they did, nine times out of ten it would be illegible! We have moved past handwriting to typing, to computers. Then I recalled my mother...

My mother had beautiful handwriting, and she worked at it too. But at the end of her life she had Altheizmer's, and so she did not write the last 5 or so years of her life. I didn't really notice it until she gave Poodle (my youngest), the favorite picture that she (my mom) had painted. It was one of those things that everyone in the family coveted, but Poodle and my mom shared a very special bond, and so the picture was to go to her. I was concerned that others in the family would try to claim the picture as theirs, so I asked my mom to write, "to Poodle with love, Grandma." Mom had a terrible time remembering how to write, much less how to spell. I had to show her how to form the letters so she could write that one line. How I cherish that writing--even more than the picture! This was the last thing she ever wrote before she passed unexpectedly of a stroke a few months later.