December ritual

My mother phones me and carefully tells me: ‘Don’t do any laundry tomorrow; it is the day your grandfather died’. 
She remembers all these things, important dates and certain facts. Unlike me, she knows something about sacrifice.
So I plan not to do any laundry, not to violate her beliefs as there is something immensely beautiful in the way she 

makes the request, in the way she remembers dates and performs old rituals. Although quite disobeying by nature, 
I agree to her call of duty.

I don’t want to know the date, I actually don’t know it, I refuse to memorize it, although my memory reminds me that
 it was winter when it happened, it was December and I was away, in another country, surrounded by others, shielded 
from grief and rituals. I was told after the funeral, days later, when my parents considered it was the time. 
That’s why I don’t know the date and I refuse to ask or to remember. 
It is like it didn't even happen.