Anniversaries, birthdays, holidays

Grief has a calendar. The death date. Their birthday. Yours. Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day, New Year's Eve at 11:59 when a year they lived in ends forever.

The dates are hard, and the dread before the dates is often harder. Whole weeks lost to the approach of a single square on the calendar. And the world is no help: it either forgets your date entirely or expects you to be festive on its dates, in December, at the table with the empty chair.

There's no trick that makes these days painless. But after five years of them, and thousands of this community's hard dates, I can promise you this much: the day itself is almost never as unsurvivable as the dread insists it will be. And there are ways to meet it that hurt less than pretending it's a normal Tuesday.

These pieces take the calendar one square at a time.

• The death anniversary: the dread, the day, the day afterThe anniversary of a death arrives every year with weeks of dread ahead of it. How grievers actually mark the day: rituals, plans, permission, and why the dread usually outruns the date.
• Father's Day when your dad has diedFather's Day after your dad's death: the gift guides, the "best dad" mugs, the socials full of other people's fathers. How the fatherless get through the day, from someone who does it every June.
• The first Christmas without themThe first Christmas after a death: the empty chair, the traditions that hurt, the pressure to be festive. What grieving families actually do to get through December, from people who have.
• Getting married without themWalking down the aisle without your dad, the mother-of-the-bride seat empty: how to include a dead parent or loved one in your wedding, and hold joy and grief in the same day.
• A holiday season survival plan for grieversNovember to January is grief's longest gauntlet: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, back to back, all themed family and joy. A practical season plan for grieving people, built from years of hard Decembers.
• Mother's Day when your mum has diedMother's Day after your mum's death: the card aisle, the brunch adverts, the inbox full of gift promotions. How motherless daughters and sons survive the year's most inescapable date.
• New Year: a year they'll never be inAt midnight on December 31, grievers cross a line nobody else sees: into a year their person will never touch. Why New Year hits so strangely in grief, and how to walk into the new year carrying them.
• Thanksgiving with an empty chairThanksgiving after a loss: a holiday built entirely around the table where they're missing, and around gratitude you may not feel. How grieving families hold the fourth Thursday.
• The dread before the dateThe anniversary is in three weeks and you're already underwater: why the dread before grief dates almost always hurts more than the dates themselves, and how to spend the approach.
• Their birthday, afterWhat do you do with the birthday of someone who died? Cake or silence, celebration or quiet: how grievers mark their person's birthday, and why so many still say happy birthday out loud.
• Valentine's Day and griefValentine's Day after losing a partner, and for every griever surrounded by hearts in February: surviving the couples' holiday when your person has died, and reclaiming the day for love that remains.
• Your birthday without themYour birthday after their death: the missing call, the card that doesn't come, the guilt of celebrating at all. Why your own birthday can hurt worse than theirs, and how to hold the day.