If it weren't for the camera around my neck, we never would have become friends.

I was wandering around Kopychyntsi, my husband's hometown in Ukraine, photographing the local pond, the ducks, the houses. The non-threatening subjects. It was 2001, my first year at Kodak, my second visit to Ukraine. I had just switched over to digital photography and was experimenting with my first digital camera, a Kodak DC4800, which I had purchased just before this trip.

Although I had met my husband's large extended family and photographed them, I hadn't worked up my courage to photograph strangers. Not yet. But as I chased some ducks on the street, an elderly woman called out to me.

"Take my picture," she requested, and posed proudly in front of a hovel. When I asked where she lived, she pointed to the lot behind her, so I misunderstood that this dilapidated structure was her home. It wasn't until a year later when I returned with a print for her that I realized that the house she lived in was behind this rundown building.

I learned her name on that second visit. Teklia was not a native of Kopychyntsi. This might explain why she'd been so uncharacteristically bold in asking me to photograph her. Teklia had moved here to be near her married son, her only surviving child. But he had gotten a job abroad, as have many Ukrainians since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and she was left quite alone in this town. She begged me to come again.

"If only you lived here, you could help me carry water from the well in the winter," she lamented. Her home has no running water, no toilet, no bathtub. She carried her water in buckets from the public well on the street, used an outhouse, and washed in a basin. My heart went out to her.

This time I photographed her in front of her house. I stopped by whenever I could.

It occurred to me that the pictures of Teklia over the years are a historic record not only of her life and our friendship, but of the digital cameras I've owned over the years. The first two years, I photographed her with my then top-of-the-line 3.1-megapixel DC4800.

I returned to Ukraine two years later. I brought Teklia prints from my previous visit; she fixed me a meal. Even if you drop by unannounced, most Ukrainians will host you with food and drink - sometimes a cup of tea and a sweet, other times a full meal. By now Teklia had gotten used to the camera that was perpetually around my neck. I was even able to capture a candid shot of her.

Teklia making tea, 2004 both taken with my Minolta	Teklia with bread and tea, 2004

By now I had graduated to a 5-megapixel Minolta, a camera I became disillusioned with because of the washed-out colors of the images it captured and how quickly its batteries ran down.

My following trip to Ukraine in 2005 was short, so my visit to Teklia's house was brief. This time she complained of high blood pressure and deterioration of vision. She could no longer read. She didn't want me to leave. I began to wonder whether I'd see her again.

That summer I used a 5-megapixel Kodak DX7590. I loved the bright colors of the images, but missed the 28mm wide-angle capability of the DC4800 and the Minolta, which were useful for taking in more of the surroundings from the same vantage point, and inside a house, you often can't get any further back from your subject.

It was another two years before I returned to Ukraine. Teklia was one of the first people I visited. She wasn't outside, and her door was closed. I knocked. I heard some noises inside, then a voice. "Who is it?"

"Vera," I answered. "From America."

"Who?"

I repeated my answer.

After much shuffling and scraping, the door opened, and there she stood, thin, haggard, propped up with a cane. She was panting from the effort of walking to the door.

"Oh, Verochko," she crooned, using a diminutive of my given name. "I have been sick for a long time. What month is it?"

"August..."

"May God bless you that you have not forgotten me."

Teklia by the bed where she spends most of her time, 2007 both taken with my Kodak EasyShare P880	Teklia with her passport

Teklia could barely walk. She was unsteady on her feet, keeping them far apart as she tottered over to a wooden chair near her bed. She sat down awkwardly with the aid of a second cane. Then she paused to catch her breath again.

My heart broke.

She could no longer cook. Or fetch water. Or go to the latrine outside. She was completely at the mercy of neighbors who brought her food and fetched her water and emptied the contents of the bucket in her room, which functioned as her toilet. This bucket was positioned under a chair with a hole cut in the seat. The odor of its contents hit my nostrils as soon as I stepped inside. Her house, once so clean, now smelled of deteriorating health and progressing frailty.

Despite her ill health, she didn't forget her manners and in typical Ukrainian hospitality, offered me a jam-filled pastry - which I had to fetch myself.

"I am so lonely, so lonely... Will you come again tomorrow?"

This past summer I used two Kodak cameras I'd purchased in the last year, the 8-megapixel P880, a "prosumer" camera with 24mm wide-angle lens, which is even wider than my previous cameras' 28mm capability, and the 7.1-megapixel V705 with a 23mm (!!) wide-angle lens.

As I backed up to take her picture, Teklia raised her voice in panic, "Don't touch the phone!"

I glanced around, then took a step away from the old-fashioned dial phone on her table.

"It's my lifeline," Teklia explained. "I would perish without it."

Before I left, I fetched her some water and emptied the contents of her pail.

I visited Teklia several more times this summer, sometimes bringing my husband, who mowed her lawn, and my children, who sang for her and helped with chores. She always asked what month it was. She explained that her memory was failing and even looked up her own birthday on her Ukrainian passport. She had turned 80 in the spring.

It was difficult to say good-bye, realizing that most likely, I will not see her on my next trip to Ukraine. But I am so thankful to have memories of Teklia captured over many years with many cameras.

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