Reflections: Looking Back Now, from A Year to Remember... with My Mother and Alzheimer's Disease, by Brenda S. Parris

"Yesterday Once More"

The first year after her death was a rough one for me, second was a little better, and in the third I was able to go back and finish graduate school. Then then in the fourth year, I began a successful career, and in the fifth one I published my book Waiting for the Morning: a Mother and Daughter's Journey through Alzheimer's Disease. I'm in the eighth year now*, and I've gone on with my life, though I still miss my mother, especially around holidays (especially in the Spring--with her birthday, the anniversary of her death, Easter, and Mother's Day) and wish I could sit down with her and tell her all that has happened since. I've been keeping these thoughts, poems and pictures here for seven years now, and it has helped to think of the good times we shared.

The dates below are when I wrote the text on the following pages, not the dates of events or pictures found there; Sorry for any confusion.

Also the above was written in 2004, just 8 years after my mother passed away.

2023 Update: It has now been 27 years since my mother passed away. In October I walked in her memory in the Alzheimer's Association's Walk to End Alzheimer's for my 26th consecutive year. So much has happened that I can't even begin to tell you, but I will try at some point. I have lost my two brothers and my sister plus my siblings-in-law over the past seven years. There is no one living back home anymore, and that's really difficult, especially around the holidays. I am still working in the same position as a community college librarian, though I am past retirement age and will probaby have to leave in the next couple years or so. I will try to tell more about what has happened in the past 27 years when I update my "About Me" page, which I will try to do very soon.

Reminded by a Dream (January 5, 1997)