Occasions
Dates worth keeping
Kindness is not a daily habit. It is a response to something that happened on a particular day — and the useful moment is almost never the day itself.
Why the reminder is never on the day
The day of a funeral is the day with the most attention in it. So is the night before an operation, and the first morning of a new job. The flowers arrive, the messages arrive, and everybody who was going to say something says it.
Then it stops. The fortnight after the operation is when the house is quiet and the recovery is still going. Week three of the new job is when the new person eats lunch alone. Year three of an anniversary is when almost nobody remembers except the one person who cannot forget. Those are the moments a date in a calendar is actually good for, so those are the ones these reminders are set to.
The anniversary of a death
A week before, every year
In year one everybody remembers. By year three almost nobody does, which is the year it means the most. A week's notice is the difference between a message and a plan.
When someone has died →A birthday nobody else will mark
A week before, every year
A birthday with nobody in it is not fixed by a message on the day. It is fixed by somebody having made a plan the week before.
When someone is on their own →An operation, a treatment, a hospital date
A fortnight after
Everybody texts the night before. Almost nobody texts once it turns out the recovery is longer than the sympathy — and the fortnight after is when the house goes quiet.
When someone is ill →Somebody arrived — a new job, a new country, a new street
Three weeks after
Week one, everybody is welcoming. Week three is when the new person eats lunch alone and concludes that this is simply what it is like here.
When someone is new here →Somebody took on caring for another person
Every month, starting a month in
The one reminder here that repeats more often than once a year, because a carer's year is twelve of the same month. Caring does not end, and the asking should not either.
When someone is caring for someone →Somebody lost a job
A month after
The sympathy arrives in week one. The standing orders arrive in month two, by which time everybody has assumed it is sorted.
When money is the problem →
Where these dates are kept
In this browser, and nowhere else. There is no account, no row in a database and no request made when you keep a date — the site never learns that you have kept one, which is the only version of this worth having. The calendar file is built on your device and handed straight to your calendar.
That cuts both ways: the list will not follow you to your phone, and clearing your browsing data clears it. You can remove any of them above, or all of them at once. What is and is not stored.
For the ideas you meant to get round to rather than a date you are keeping, there is the saved list.