I like to joke that even when I had no vision at all, much to my husband’s dismay, I could still sign a credit card receipt. Although I do have some sight, I cannot see what I am writing. I always had extremely good printing and friends say I still have better penmanship than they do. And they wonder how that can be.
I have no scientific data but I believe it’s muscle memory: my brain tells my hand the letters to create. The space in between characters and sentences can get a little dicey but it seems as long as I don’t really think too much about it, all goes well. The second I hesitate, I am completely thrown off. Try it. Write a few sentences without looking at the paper. How did you do? It’s strange, isn’t it?
While signing a check this morning, I thought about being able to write my name and I was taken back five years to my mom’s final months. The cancer that originated in her gallbladder had spread to her neck and the mass there severely effected her right arm. She had a lot of difficulty controlling her hand and the results were shaky and sometimes illegible. This seemed to upset her more than the pain or the terminal diagnosis. She would sit with a pen and yellow legal pad, writing her name over and over. I was in survival mode during this time, coordinating visiting nurses and doctors’ appointments, picking up groceries and medications, going to her house every night after work to spend time with her and help her get ready for bed. All while trying to wrap my head around the fact that my best friend was dying, right before my eyes, which were fully operational at the time.
In the midst of all that, I did recognize the importance of her signing her name. Our signature is our identity, it is the most basic way that we show and prove to the world that we are who we are. It is a legal acknowledgement, promise and agreement. It is a personal representation that we exist and perhaps that is what she was holding on to. The cancer was taking her body and her life, but inside was a woman who still was, and her signature the evidence of that.
I understand her determination to write her name, line after line, despite the energy it took that she didn’t have, and the frustration she felt at how wobbly her name looked no matter how hard she tried. I kept that tablet and every time I have signed my name since my vision loss, I have thought of her, sitting at the kitchen table in a neck brace, showing us all she was still here. I know now, through my own experience, that clinging to everything that we are when tragedy strikes is primal, defiant and necessary for survival. We may have lost much, but we will take a stand and write our name on a piece of paper, drawing the proverbial line in the sand.
I lost my sight five months after my mom died. Oh, how I wanted and needed and longed for her! If she were only here, I would painfully think to myself.
But you know what? She was here and that tablet is one of my most prized possessions. And although our names are nothing alike, every time I sign mine, I do it for both of us. Even though I can’t see it, the world can. Because she was, so am I.