Passed port

I decided to thin out my filing cabinet this weekend and came across my husband’s passport.

It was a wrench, I’m not gonna lie.  Afternoon years of declaring no want or need to travel outside the country, he had decided out of the blue the year before he died, that he was open to the idea of taking an overseas vacation.

The passport is pristine.  No stamps. Sadly, we never had a chance to wander the beaches of Cozumel or whatever destination on the world map that we may have stuck a pin in (likely a beach locale or maybe Ireland).

My husband was not very flexible.  The idea of an uncharted adventure scared him.  But he had been changing in small ways, becoming more open to dipping his toes into the water of the unfamiliar.  If we had more time I am sure we would have embarked on an adventure or two that would have carried us beyond the beaches of Maine and Rhode Island.

I took the passport with his smiling photo, and those oh-so rosy cheeks, and threw it into the garbage can next to my desk.  I cried.  It was like throwing away a part of our dream, discarding the more adventurous man he would have become.

You stumble across these inanimate time bombs time and time again in your domestic travels.  A notebook scribbled with a list of items to buy at Home Depot.  A wallet and assorted pens kept in a front pocket – still on his dresser.  I was dusting our bedroom recently and came across a large box on a shelf that holds all of our wedding cards.

So hard to let go, since it seems like a betrayal to do so. But such a painful land to revisit.