Loss creates a before and after that calendars cannot fully explain.

A large loss splits time. There is the version of your life before it and the version after, and the two do not connect smoothly, however many months sit between them. Dates and anniversaries try to describe this and always fall short, because the distance is not really measured in time. It is measured in how differently the world reads.

Give yourself permission to find the first year strange in ways you cannot explain to people. If the calendar feels meaningless, use your own markers instead. Understanding that the split is real, and not a failure of adjustment, takes some of the confusion out of it.