One. The dates nobody else is keeping

The due date. The date it happened. The date of the scan. Eid, when everybody else is holding children. The week you would have been telling people.

Your body and your calendar both keep this record whether or not you asked them to, and a date can flatten you before you have consciously worked out what day it is.

Nobody around you knows the dates. That is not neglect. It is that they were never told, because there was no funeral at which anyone learned them.

There are two useful moves and neither one is heroic. Know your own dates in advance, so that being wrecked on a Thursday in March is information rather than evidence that you are going backwards. And, if you want to, tell one person one date. Not so that they can do anything. So that it exists.