An anniversary can return on schedule while the feelings associated with it arrive unpredictably.

Anniversaries keep an exact date while grief and memory keep none. The day comes around punctually, and the feeling may arrive a week early, or on some unremarkable Tuesday, or not at all when you had braced for it. That mismatch can make people think they are doing remembrance wrong, when they are only encountering the difference between a calendar and a mind.

Mark the day if marking helps, but do not measure yourself by what you feel on it. If the weight lands early, let it land there. If the date passes lightly, that is not forgetting. Whatever is going to come will come at its own time, and meeting it then counts just as much.