At the facility, Joan would have several daily sessions with speech and physical therapists, with time off for rest in the late afternoons and evenings. She had to relearn how to speak clearly, how to use her right hand, how to walk. The doctors told us that with the proper rehabilitation, she could regain much of her normal life, although she was now at increased risk for additional strokes.

Joan’s room had a few dents on the edges of the furniture and scuff marks on the beige walls where wheelchair tires had bumped. I wondered who had lived there before her. The blue-and-beige-patterned curtains were depressingly institutional, and I made a mental note to bring in fresh flowers and photos of Grandpa and the family. Maybe some art supplies or the catalog of Joan’s work to remind her of who she was, because it seemed like sometimes she still had trouble remembering.

Before we left her on the first night, she asked me, in her slurred speech, to bring the last box of Grandpa’s papers so she could sort them. “I’m going to be bored out of my mind here,” she said. “Keep me occupied with something.”

“I will,” I said, and I bent down to hug her before we left. She smelled like the hospital.

—

I googled nearby camera stores and found one in San Anselmo stuffed between a boutique and a bookstore. It looked like it had been there since the 1950s, and when I went inside, an actual bell jingled against the door. The interior was meticulously clean, with shelves of cameras neatly lined up on the wall and a spotless glass counter spanning the width. Behind the counter, a white woman with curly brown hair sat on a stool looking at a MacBook.

“How can I help you?” she asked.

I took Joan’s Rolleiflex out of my backpack. “I want to buy some film for this.”

“Nice camera,” she said. “You into retro photography?”

“It belongs to my grandmother,” I said, setting it on the glass counter. “She’s an artist. She hasn’t used it in a while, though. Do you think it still works okay?”

She took the camera out of its leather case and removed the lens cap, popping open the viewfinder to look through the lens. She moved a lever, pressed a button that clicked, and then twisted something on the camera that caused the bottom to flip open. “It’s in pretty good shape,” she said, closing the bottom after she’d looked inside. “You should just try it out. Do you want color or black-and-white film?”

Joan’s art photography was all black-and-white. “Black-and-white,” I said.

The woman got up and went to a cabinet behind her, returning with a couple of small rectangular boxes. “There are twelve exposures per roll, so I’d buy two to get started. That’s twenty dollars.”