Remembering the death dates of people you love can be like remembering their birthdays

My sister Gina has a genius for remembering dates. She remembers birthdays and wedding anniversaries for an astonishing array of people, including our parents, all seven of her brothers and sisters, her favorite cousin, all her nieces and nephews, several of her neighbors and her favorite grocery store clerks.

The fact that these numbers are logged into her mind with scientific precision impresses me all the more because she doesn't use computers, doesn't keep a calendar and struggles with basic arithmetic.

Yet somehow, these anniversaries are as vivid to her as the sun, helping to establish the rhythm of her life, and no anniversaries are more important to her than the death dates of people she has loved.

"The anniversary of dad's death is coming up," she said on the phone the other day. She always remembers. I always forget.

"Oh, right," I said.

I usually remember our father's birthday, May 11, and I know that he died in April. I even remember that it was on a Sunday. I was stuck in Florida covering a trial. I was napping, with the hotel drapes half drawn, when the bedside phone rang. I remember my sister-in-law saying my father, who was in the hospital, might not last the day and that I should hurry. I remember rushing to the plane — Eastern Airlines — and the long layover — Atlanta — and that when I finally got to Phoenix, my mother stood at the airport gate, alone. It was odd to see her alone. I remember that. This small woman who had spent most of her married life in little houses crowded by her big family. Oddly alone. And I remember that as I approached she opened her arms and said simply, "He died."

But the date?

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"April 25?" I said to Gina.

"No!" Gina said. "April 21. How many years has it been?"

The date was seared into her brain but she couldn't do the math. I'm not great at math, either, but I calculated for a few seconds.

"Thirty-six?"

"Can you believe it?" she said. "Thirty-six!"

Thirty-six really was hard to believe, in the way that past time is always hard to believe, a nanosecond and an eon all wrapped into one. But what was harder for me to believe was that Gina never forgets Dad's death date, or our mother's or brother's or several others.

I asked her how she manages to remember them all, noting that I never get them right. She laughed. "Is it strange?"

The sheer number of dates Gina holds in her head does strike me as unusual, but a lot of people remember death dates of their close people, as I deduced when I quizzed Facebook friends on the topic.

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