The driver’s license still says my husband has blue eyes

Dear Delyara, I finally emptied my husband’s wallet today. He died fourteen months ago. Credit cards expired. Store loyalty cards meant nothing. Then I found his driver’s license. Blue eyes. Six foot one. Two hundred and six pounds. The state had reduced him to facts so ordinary I had never thought to treasure them. Blue eyes. Of course they were blue. I looked into them across breakfast for twenty-seven years. I watched them close when he sneezed and become almost gray when he was tired. Why did seeing “BLUE” printed on plastic hurt? Maybe because the license expects a police officer or bartender to need that information someday. It expires next year. That bothered me too. His birthday will pass. The card will become invalid. As if some system somewhere has decided the date when even his identification should stop pretending he may walk into a room and need to prove who he is. I put the license back in his wallet. The bank cards can go. The receipts can go. I am not ready to throw away a government-issued reminder that my husband was tall, had blue eyes, and once lived in a world where somebody expected him to be driving.