My passport has expired. It elapsed during Covid and I thought, why would I have my picture taken when I feel and look like THIS?

Well, now I’m stuck. There’s a special gathering in Canada I want to attend, and as I looked at buying tickets online, I realized I can’t go. I’m not legal. Rats.

I had been waiting all summer to get my passport pictures taken – waiting until a day I might look a little better. A little younger maybe? And the funniest thing, as each day passed, younger didn’t describe the face looking back at me. Each morning, my mirror slides further into a geriatric wonderland. So, I gave up. I had the pictures taken yesterday. I don’t even recognize this woman.

The woman I want this snapshot to resemble is animated and vibrant. The passport bureau should require microchip videos instead of these flat, sadistic photos. Then we would all have a chance to “show our stuff.”

Since that is probably not going to happen, I’m plunging ahead with these sad sack mug shots and buying my last passport. Yup, you read it here: my last one. I just did the math, adding the ten-year lifespan of a passport to my age. I realized that by then, the matron won’t let me out of the home anyway.

And I’m driving my last car. That thought first occurred to me as I was signing the papers in the showroom.

If this beauty is my last car, I better get everything I want on it. That was 4¢ years ago. Since then, I’ve put a staggering 22,000 miles on its odometer. If this car expires when my passport does, it will have about 70,000 miles on it. It’ll be running better than I will at that point, and have less body damage. My wheels aren’t so hot now, but my engine is still humming.

My mother never once thought of any purchase as a last buy. When she was 92, she rolled up my driveway one afternoon in a beige Buick sedan. It looked exactly like her blue Buick, only shinier. I asked her if her car was in the shop.

“Is this a loaner?”

“Oh no,” she bragged, “I just bought it.”

“W-H-A-A-A-A–T? You aren’t serious,” I said.

“Oh yeah, mine was 12 years old, so I just updated it.” She shrugged. The car was used, but definitely a creampuff. “Isn’t it great? It was owned by a little old lady.” She grinned.

I was stunned. She hadn’t talked at all about wanting new wheels. When I recovered, I kidded her about buying her last car. “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” she said. “Ya never know. A few years from now, I might just stumble on a deal too good to pass up.”

Buying her last car – her last “anything” – was not in her vocabulary. I like to think of myself as realistic, but maybe her approach to endings was more lighthearted, more fun.

In the meantime, I’ve looked around and decided that much of what surrounds me is in the category of “lasts.” The washer and dryer I bought last year darn well better be my last. The stainless French door refrigerator that I bought four years ago replaced the new one we bought when we moved here. That one was 11 years old when it bit the dust, and I never forgave it. I can’t imagine that new appliances have a shorter life span than I have now.

Dear Richard has also been advised that he is in the “last” category. Years ago, when my late husband, Tom, and I would attend a big event, I used to kiddingly introduce him as “my first husband.” Well, it was true. But it was fun watching the reaction on peoples’ faces.

Now that it has occurred to me that Richard will be my last, I think I’ll do the same. “Oh, have you met Richard, my last husband?” Interestingly, they both sorta seem like the same joke.

Should be fun.

See? This is why passports should have videos. The border officials would see that we old codgers and codgerettes still know how to laugh, twinkle and misbehave. Those authorities could look past the sagging jowls, wrinkles and crinkles – and see before them someone who might be on their last legs – but is still ready to do some dancing.

Maybe one Last Tango? Hey, if it’s in Paris, at least I’ll have my passport.

Marcy O’Brien lives in Warren, Pa., with Dear Richard and Finian, their sleepaholic Maine Coon cat. She can be reached at Moby.32@hotmailcom.