Fifteen years later

Today is one of the positive and important anniversaries in my life, and it always has been. Fifteen years ago today, Nigel and I had our civil union ceremony. Last year, I said:

I’ve often said how our Civil Union was, at the time, the happiest day of our lives—until we were married in 2013, and that day became the happiest of our lives. And yet, with everything that’s happened since that 2009 day, it would’ve been easy for this date to become lost. Naturally, I won’t let that happen.

I think that happy times always deserve to be remembered, even if there are terrible times that follow. Those good times aren’t diminished by those later bad times, but maybe the bad ones can, at least for a little while, not seem quite as bad. It works for me, anyway.

The anniversary of our civil union was the final event in my annual “Season of Anniversaries”, and even though I no longer refer to that—the joke doesn’t seem funny to me anymore—the anniversaries within that “season” are still important to me, and I still talk about them. I think that over time I may have new anniversaries that matter to me, too, but even if I don’t, the old ones are there for me. Sometimes that fact is very important.

I ended last year’s post by saying:

So, Happy anniversary to us once again. This anniversary was eclipsed by our marriage, and all of it was eclipsed by Nigel’s death, but it turns out that it was only a partial eclipse. I’m still here, my memories are still here, and our shared history and love are still here. It turns out, that’s plenty reason enough to celebrate.

Indeed. That’s the reason to continue to note the anniversary of a very happy day—even if it was only the second-happiest of my life.

Previously

2009: Perfect Day – where it began
2010: One and Fifteen
2011: Second Anniversary, squared
2012: Three years ago today
2013: Fourth Anniversary
2014: An anniversary
2015: Anniversaries
2016: A seventh Anniversary
2017: Eight years later
2018: Nine years later
2019: Ten years later
There was no post in 2020.
2021: Twelve years later
2022: Thirteen years later
2023: Fourteen years later