A large photo of him and his wife, taken on their wedding day, hangs on an otherwise bare wall in Ms. Brunn’s apartment in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood; she put it there before she lost her eyesight.

Her greatest disappointment, she said, is that she can no longer venture outside alone.

“I used to love going out for walks,” Ms. Brunn said. “I probably used to go to the store around three or four times a day. I love to get out. I miss that.”

Now she can leave home only if she has a chaperone, a role most often filled by her son Edward Davis, 50, who drops by regularly. He guides her throughout the neighborhood as she instructs him to go to various stores. They are so well-known that Mr. Davis says he cannot wander into shops alone without raising eyebrows

“There’ll be times when I’m outside going to the store and all I can hear is, ‘Where’s Mommy?’” he said.