Today marks the one year anniversary of My Grandmother's death. The family got together yesterday in Oshawa, however it was not primarily to mark this particular occasion, rather it was to mark the engagement of my cousin Cherie to her army boyfriend, Mikk.

Maybe we spend too much time marking anniversaries. We start by marking wedding anniversaries, our birthdays, and other important events in our lives. But then we also have a bad habit of marking the dark moments in our lives, thus we have the one, the two, and soon the three year anniversary of 9-11 . Some folks mark the death of Princess Diana on a annual basis.

Some of our dark moments are worth remembering year after year. In June we marked the 60th anniversary of D-Day, and soon we'll be marking the anniversary of V-E Day, and next year the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima and V-J Day. Next year will be the 61st anniversary of D-Day, and there won't be as much hoopla, simply because the number of years since the event is not divisible by the number of toes on our feet. Still it's worth marking, at least as long as some of the participants are still alive.

In 9 days I will be quietly celebrating the 20th anniversary of the boating accident that took my life. True, the emergency workers brought me back to life, but I was paralyzed for a short time and spent 6 months in hospital. It was a life-altering experience for a 16 year old. Is the 20th anniversary of this event an important anniversary, any more important than the 19th anniversary? Probably not.

And for that matter, why is the 365 day anniversary of my grama's death any more important than the 359 day anniversary? Is she any more dead? Not at all.

Still, it kinda hurts.