Yellow Kodak

Tara had been cleaning for three hours.

Grandma Peters’ house was not messy per se, but it had a certain disorganization that called for a high level of sorting skills. It was the type of house that was only organized to her and no one else. This is the way it had been since her Grandpa Peters died four years ago, in 2032. Now, in 2036, Grandma Peters had been admitted to Regency Care Senior Homes, twenty miles away from her three-bedroom, two-bathroom home.

She and Grandpa had lived in the house on Hummingbird Lane since they were married and had raised their two kids there, Nick and Mindy. The house was full of their lives.

Tara looked around fondly, remembering her days running around the house as a child. The house had an old, familiar smell that she loved with all her heart. She was now a college student, working as a coffee shop barista. Things seemed to always change so fast sometimes.

Because Grandma Peters was going to be staying in the senior home from now on, her only daughter, Tara’s mom, had talked to her about selling the house to help cover the nursing home expenses, since it had been empty of any residence for the year that she had been in the nursing home. Grandma Peters had solemnly agreed, losing the last bit of hope that one of her children would want to inherit the old house.

The original plan was that Tara and her mom were going to pack up the house together but, in her usual way, her mom was called in to work, leaving Tara to pack alone. She had packed most of the house already and decided to tackle the attic today. She climbed the ladder to the attic, bracing herself for the onslaught of dust she knew awaited her.

When she reached the top, she pulled the light on, giving the small, stuffy room a mellow glow. The summer sun’s glare from a small, cloudy window didn’t seem to be able to penetrate the attic’s atmosphere but the heat persisted in spite of the dim lighting. Tara grabbed the first box near her and began descending the ladder.

Dust formed a thick layer on top of the box, evidence that no one had been near these items for a very long time. Tara sighed, thinking about how dusty the belongings in the back of the attics would be.

She set the box on the floor with a small clink. Opening the box, she released a puff of dust into the air. She peered inside, a sneeze wrinkling her nose. After pushing aside some brown paper, she found an old china set. It was blue and pink, perfectly dainty. Tara closed the box again and started back up the ladder.

She grabbed the next box within reach and repeated the process of placing it along the wall next to the first one. This box also clinked when it was set down. Upon opening it, she found another china set. This one was plain white. How many china sets can one grandma have? Tara thought to herself.

Seven china sets later, she was becoming exhausted with the continuous climb up and down the ladder. She could hardly believe that Grandma Peters had so many china sets in her attic. How long had they been there? What were they for? She decided to take one more box down before taking a break, it was nearly lunch time.

Tara had removed enough boxes now that she actually had to enter into the attic to grab the next one. She grabbed a box that was significantly lighter than the others. She hoped it was finally something other than a china set. As she was halfway down the ladder, the bottom of the box gave way and a slew of items fell to the floor with a clatter.

Moving to the bottom of the ladder, still holding the broken box, she sighed and began gathering the items together again. The top of the box was still taped together so she turned it upside down and began to fill it again. A stack of old postcards, small figurines from a selection of gift shops, a collection of seashells, an old Mickey Mouse hat, and other such memorabilia all were returned.

“These must be traveling memories,” she said to herself, grabbing an old McDonald’s toy that had broken in the fall and placing it back in anyways.

Scanning the area around her, making sure she had collected all the items, she placed the box along the wall with the rest. She stretched her back and brushed her pants off. Covered in grime and dust, she was ready to eat lunch.

As she began to leave, something caught her eye. In the doorway to the bedroom nearest the attic ladder, there was a little yellow plastic object on the floor. It must have fallen out of the broken box and bounced further than everything else. Tara stepped closer and stooped down to pick it up.

Upon further inspection she recognized it as an old one-time-use film camera. The word “Kodak” was prominent on the front. Fiddling with the wheel on the back, she listened to the clicking as it turned. She laughed to herself a little bit, she hadn’t seen one of these for years. She used to love to take a similar camera to summer camps or

family vacations in her childhood but had always managed to lose or damage it in the process and hadn’t ever successfully developed any photos before.

She twisted the wheel on the camera and pointed it at the stack of boxes, intending to take a picture. She pressed the button. Nothing happened. Disappointment hitting, she pressed the button again. Still nothing. She examined the camera, searching for the issue. She spotted a little white box with a black “0” in it. Now she understood. The camera was out of film to take the pictures. She giggled to herself and inwardly felt grateful that her cellphone could store thousands of pictures.

Tara started to place the camera back into its box with the rest of Grandma Peters’ traveling memorabilia when suddenly she had an idea. A big smile started forming on her face as she took the camera into the kitchen with her and put it inside her purse. A Kodak with no more photos meant that there were old pictures saved on it. Tara’s curiosity wanted to know what those other pictures were. She knew that certain stores could still develop the film off of cameras like this one and excitedly got into her car. A little side quest never hurt anyone, but first she needed lunch.

An hour later, Tara was walking out of a WalMart with an empty plastic camera and a paper envelope with 25 pictures inside of it. She had made the decision while waiting for them to print that she wouldn’t look at them on her own. She wanted to surprise her grandma by bringing the printed photos to her in the nursing home so they could look through them together.

Anxiety had driven her to peek, however, just in case there were any inappropriate pictures. She wasn’t expecting to see any, but it was better than showing up in the nursing home with some less than desirable images. In the quick glances she allowed herself, Tara saw photos of children on various vacations, in school uniforms, and a few of her grandpa. Satisfied that it was simply family photos, she’d closed the envelope and driven to the nursing home.

After checking in at the front desk, Tara entered her grandma’s room and saw her propped up in bed with a blanket over her legs. She looked older every time Tara came to visit her. Although she wasn’t as old as the typical residents of the nursing home, she was only 70, her advancing dementia had made the move necessary. With Tara being in school, her mom constantly busy with work, and her uncle Nick living out of state, no one in the immediate family was capable of taking her in to care for her. That’s when it was decided she should be in a home.

Ever since the move, Grandma Peters had become more and more lethargic and consistently spent extended periods of time in bed. The final blow had been when she’d caught a bad flu, which had seemed to advance her age by an extra decade. She breathed laboriously and did not stay awake for more than a few hours at a time.

Tara rapped her knuckle on the door as she entered to alert her grandma of her presence. Grandma Peters laid there with her eyes closed.

“Grandma?” Tara said quietly, trying not to startle her awake. “Grandma, it’s Tara.” She touched her shoulder lightly.

The old woman inhaled sharply and slowly opened her eyes. She looked at Tara, a little confused.

“Is it time for my medicine?” She asked groggily.

“No, it isn’t. I’m your granddaughter, Tara. Do you know me?” She asked tentatively. Some days Grandma Peters knew who they were without a doubt and others she didn’t even know herself anymore.

“Please let me sleep, nurse, unless there’s medicine.” And she turned to her side and started drifting back to sleep again.

Tara sighed. She had really wanted her grandma to be able to see the pictures she had brought her. Grandma Peters had periods of lucidness sometimes so she decided to leave the pictures on the bedside table for her to look at when she wanted to be awake.

As she started out the door, she wondered what her grandma would think if the pictures were there when she wasn’t lucid, so she decided to write a note for her. She took a sticky note from the desk on the other side of the room and wrote on it: “Grandma, I found an old film camera when I was cleaning up the attic and went ahead and developed the pictures for you to look at. I hope these bring back some good memories for you. – Your granddaughter, Tara.” She stuck the note to the envelope of pictures and left them on the bedside table.

Her side mission completed, Tara dejectedly drove back to Grandma Peters’ house to continue her cleaning project. As she entered the front door for the second time that day, the familiar smell of her grandma’s house was overwhelming. Tara began to cry, heartbroken by her grandma’s memory. Her heart ached as she visualized her grandma squatting in the foyer, with her arms wide open, while Tara ran to her for a big hug. Her grandma would scoop her up and spin her around, kissing her cheeks and cooing over her cute dresses. The weight of her own age began to sit on Tara’s shoulders. How had she ever been that young?

She spent the rest of the day slowly re-organizing and cleaning Grandma Peters’ house and preparing it for a future estate sale. When the clocks reached seven, she got back in her car and headed home for the night.

Tara woke up to her phone violently vibrating on her bedside table. She winced as she held her phone up to her face and the brightness blinded her. She rubbed her eyes and adjusted enough to read the word “MOM” in the caller I.D. Glancing at the time, she saw that it was just after three in the morning.

“Hello?” She answered the phone, her voice thick with sleep.

“Tara, honey, I just got a call from the nursing home.” Her mom sounded sad. Tara’s brain was still processing its consciousness and grappling for reality. “Honey, they say that grandma is in some bad shape and they want us to come in to say goodbye.”

“Oh…” She was finally starting to wake up and began comprehending the situation. “Oh.”

“I’m coming to pick you up so get dressed, okay?” She hadn’t heard her mom talk so gently since Grandpa Peters’ death.

“Okay.”

Tara hung up the phone.

By the time Tara and her mom arrived at Regency Care Senior Homes, it was too late. The nurses greeted them and apologized for their loss. A cold, numb feeling ran through Tara’s body. She could barely believe what was happening. She was still trying to convince herself that this wasn’t a dream when a nurse offered to let them in to see the body. Before she could process this new piece of information, she was being led into the room where she had seen her grandma alive a little over twelve hours ago.

Grandma Peters looked the same as she had when Tara had visited her after lunch the day before, like she was resting. She lacked the labored breathing, however, and just laid there, completely still. Tara’s mom began to cry. Tara plopped down into a chair that had been set next to the bed, too numb and surprised to have an emotional reaction. She took her grandma’s hand into hers and looked at her. Her face looked like every muscle had been released and her skin drooped dramatically over the bones of her cheeks.

After what felt like hours and simultaneously only a few minutes, Tara and her mom made their way out of the room. As they were walking out, a young nurse called after them.

“Tara! I’m so embarrassed, I nearly forgot,” the young nurse said.

“What is it?” Tara’s mom asked for her.

“A few hours before she passed, Mrs. Peters awoke, fully lucid, and began writing frantically. She requested that I give this envelope to her granddaughter, Tara.” The nurse pulled something out of her pocket and handed it to Tara. It was the envelope of pictures that she had developed and left at the nursing home.

Tara took it and stared at it in disbelief, could it really be the same envelope? Nothing seemed real at the moment. She didn’t feel lucid herself.

“What is that, honey?” She heard her mom ask.

“These are some pictures I had developed from a camera I found in grandma’s attic. I was hoping she would be able to tell me about them but she wasn’t up for it when I came to visit yesterday.”

“Oh, I see,” her mom said quietly.

Together, they went to the front lobby of the nursing home to wait for her mom’s brother, Tara’s uncle, Nick. Since he lived out-of-state, it would take him a few hours to drive to the nursing home and Tara’s mom needed him to sign paperwork and to be together as a family like they did when Grandpa Peters died. While they waited, Tara’s mom soon fell asleep in her chair, the stress of the night becoming overwhelming.

Tara couldn’t fall asleep, she still couldn’t process the idea that her grandma was dead only a few minutes’ walk down the hallway. As the sun began to rise, it lit the lobby through the big windows.

She opened the envelope of pictures. The first picture was of a young man, around Tara’s age, sitting on the doorstep of a two-story house. He was lounging on the steps and leaning on one arm, the other arm raising a can of beer in the air. Other men sat around in the background, all holding beers, laughing and talking.

Holding the picture up to the light, she noticed that some scribbling was pushing through from the back of the picture. She turned it around and her breath caught in her throat. The back of the picture was completely covered in her grandma’s handwriting.

“November 12th, 1986. This is Robert Peters on the steps of a frat house during a party. This was our third date and he gifted me the disposable Kodak camera that this picture was taken on. He was always devilishly handsome and witty. We met in college our first semester but didn’t start dating until our fourth semester. He begged me over and over to go out with him and when I finally accepted, he swept me off my feet. Have you ever heard the term “He fell first but she fell harder”, Tara? This is what it was like with him until the very end. He never faltered and neither did I.”

Tears sprung into Tara’s eyes as she devoured her grandma’s words. She turned the picture around again and studied her twenty-year-old grandpa, staring into the camera like the happiest man in the world. She looked at the second picture, a cluster of young women in front of a big house similar to her grandpa’s fraternity house. One woman in the middle had been circled. Tara flipped the photo and saw another note from her grandma. She smiled to herself, tears openly flowing down her face, knowing that each of the 25 photos in her hand had a story handwritten on the back from her Grandma Peters.