Loss of human touch in cursive's demise

What saddens me most about the inevitable demise of cursive is the loss of the handwritten letter.

My wife, Maggie, and I came to know each other and fell in love over 50 years ago, almost solely through handwritten letters that began when she was in high school and I was in the Army, stationed overseas. After her death, I discovered those letters in a box in the corner of her closet. I never knew she kept them all these years. Reading them, and seeing her hand writing, brought her back to me and kept her by my side while I struggled through my grief. Those letters are now the most precious treasure I own and led to my book, "Wouldn't It Be Something."

Any handwritten letter is uniquely the person who wrote it. For me, no one could make the same soft curve of Maggie's "S," or the gentle loop of her "L." What comes from a computer, smartphone or other form of modern communication comes from a machine. And no matter how heartfelt the words may be, they still came from a machine - and they could have been typed by anyone. What I have in my letters from Maggie came from her heart, through her pen, to the paper on which they're written - and that can never be duplicated by any other person or thing.

Nothing pecked or poked on a keyboard, seen on a screen for fleeting seconds or emogied could ever duplicate the power and uniqueness of a handwritten letter. In holding Maggie's letters, I hold Maggie.

Dennis F. Depcik

Buffalo Grove