My mother’s passport has a journey she never got to make

Dear Delyara, My mother got her first passport at seventy-one because I bought her a ticket to visit me in London. She practiced saying “window seat” in English and bought a winter coat even though the trip was planned for May. Two months before the flight, she had a stroke. She never recovered enough to travel and died the following year. Today, I found the passport while my sister and I were sorting documents. Every page is blank. No stamps. No visas. Just Mum’s photograph looking serious because the photographer told her not to smile. She had been so proud of that little book. She showed it to neighbors as if it already contained the world. I live in London permanently now. I cross borders without thinking, complain about airports, choose shorter queues. My mother prepared for one international journey for months and never reached the departure gate. I put the passport inside my handbag instead of the shredder pile. It has expired. Legally, it proves almost nothing now. To me, it is a book full of places my mother had finally allowed herself to imagine.