Ancient Web: Brenda Parris Kept Her Mother's Memory in a 1996 Caregiver Site

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

An early personal website could be a memorial, a diary and a support directory all at once. Brenda S. Parris made one because she wanted other people to know what caring for a parent with Alzheimer's disease felt like.

Visit A Year to Remember.

Parris's homepage gives its beginning as July 1, 1996. It grew from the journals she kept during 1994–1996, when her mother, Jessie Lee Parris, was living with Alzheimer's disease. Her mother died in April 1996. The site interweaves the family's story with photographs, poems, reflections and links to caregiving and research resources.

It has continued to change over time, but the original architecture is still visible: image-based section links, a guestbook, a site index, memorial pages and a long collection of references gathered by one person. Parris's experience as a librarian shows in the organized bibliographies and resource directories.

A journal, then an unexpected community

The journal index divides the record into chronological installments rather than compressing it into one polished retrospective. The site index names entries for successive months, poetry written during the experience, family photos and reflections published in 1997, after her mother's death.

The old review archive establishes that people were encountering the site nearly immediately. It reproduces praise dated to August and September 1996, then excerpts from 1997 online reviews and an account of the site's combination of personal testimony with practical references. Those quotations are gathered by Parris, but their dates provide concrete evidence of contemporary circulation rather than a modern claim of influence.

Parris also documents a sustained practice of participating in Alzheimer's Association fundraising walks, with photographs covering multiple years. The current site links books, interviews, later writing and community activities, while retaining its original caregiving materials.

This is personal experience, not a medical authority; disease descriptions and treatment links from the 1990s may be dated. The site's historical importance lies in how a family story found readers and made room for other caregivers to feel heard.

In a Web now full of health-content platforms, A Year to Remember is a record of something simpler and more durable: a person sharing an experience she could not bear to leave undocumented.

Browse the journal index and Parris's original recollections.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.