I found an old compact camera in the closet. When I powered it on, I started crying. This 20-year-old point-and-shoot taught me a lesson on grief

The Canon PowerShot A540 on a wood background.

As a photographer, I’m not ashamed to admit that some photographs bring me to tears. But recently, it wasn’t a photograph but an old point-and-shoot camera that brought me to tears – a 20-year-old 6MP Canon compact camera, to be exact.

I lost my grandmother to cancer in 2023. A few months later, I lost my best friend to a cancer that she wasn’t even old enough to get the routine tests for.