Maze should be 25 now.

That's about the correct age, right? As of the 9th he should have been a quarter of a century old. This is horseshit. He should be out on his own and in an apartment somewhere, working a normal job and playing video games, but naw. Some son of a bitch government therapist has to listen to Maze, a mentally ill teenager, say that he figured out when the guards do checks, which means Maze had figured out how long he had to kill himself between checks, and upon hearing that, the government therapist decides he should definitely give Maze back his bed sheets. 

"Oh so you're suicidal and you've figured out when you can do the deed? Thanks for sharing, have some bed sheets."

Either I should be playing Halo with Maze after we both get home from a long day at our jobs or that bitch should be in prison, instead I've got neither. This is horseshit.

[EDIT] I was wrong lol, not 25.

Today is All Saints Day.

Or, La Toussaint, It is normally where Catholics or formerly catholic families would flock to catholic cemeteries to visit their dearly departed loved ones graves with pots of mums and clean the graves.

Today I had to be at work here in southern Maine. I could not be there on the proper day. But I did go a few days ago on the weekend when I was able to get a ride. I cleaned up Maze and our grandparents graves and left some mums for them.

October 29th of 2023 is seven years without Maze.

It is now about 1AM on the the 30th of October, but just an hour ago it was the 29th, the day Maze decided to take his own life. Some time after that doctors decided he was brain dead and days later on the 3rd of November would be when Maze would officially declared dead. Today, or yesterday as of a hour ago, marks seven years without him. 

I've spent most of today both keeping busy while also thinking of him. It's weird to know he's not here, but at the same time I can't imagine what he would be like at the age of 24. If he were alive, I'd be thinking what I'd have to be getting him for his upcoming 25th birthday on the 9th of December, and then also for Christmas soon after. In my head he's forever stuck at the age he died at. Trying to age that image of him up to 24 years old just doesn't work. What would he It still seems so wrong that he is not here. Incorrect information. It still feels like there should not be any reason that I can't just simply email him and ask "Hey dude, what do you want for your birthday? And what about Christmas?" 

What would a 24 year old Maze want for his 25th birthday? It feels so weird that I can't imagine it at all.

I wonder if anyone else is thinking of him today as well. He changed schools a couple times, and would have to reintroduce himself under different names because he had such a hard time settling on a name after he came out as trans. Charles, then Charlie, then maybe just "Chuck" for a bit, before giving up on anything starting with a 'C' and just wanting to be called by the childhood nickname of "Maze" which  people already knew him by. No matter what anyone knew him as, I hope somebody other than just me and our mother are thinking of him. I tried without success for a long time to talk to any of his friends about their memories of Maze because I'd really like to collect and compile some stories or memories of him, note down the year each memory takes place, and through that compile a summary of each year of his life. Which shouldn't be too hard since he only had 16 of them. But no one seems to want to take part. It's something I've thought about a lot. I'm thinking of it again today.

Seven years without him. It doesn't seem real. It still feels like just yesterday our grandmother reached out to tell me Maze was dead. It feels equally as unreal now as it did that day.

Victory: I found a beach photo from 2009.

I found something very old in my Gmail account. Now, because when uploading a photo to Gmail you would sometimes loose EXIF data, I'm not 100% sure when this photo was taken, but I did find an old photo of Maze from 2009.

Maze in in the center of the photo in a blue shirt carrying a bucket. Our brother David is on the left. I took this photo of them on an old phone. Almost all of the photos from that time period were lost because they were backed up onto hard drives that broke down. I found this photo in an email I sent to myself on the 9th of August in 2009. If you've ever been to Sandy Point beach you probably recognize that abandoned pier in the background. If I remember correctly we went to that beach a couple times that summer.

I feel lucky that Gmail kept this photo that long. If I look backward to emails I sent back in 2007-2011 many of the attachments are null or corrupted. I don't know why I sent his one photo to myself back in 2009, the email is otherwise blank, but the current me of 2023 is very happy the me of 2009 did so. It's not a good photo or a hi-res one, but it's more than nothing.

Here are two that I did not loose which were taken on the same day:

Archives of obituaries for Maze Knowles.

https://archive.is/Lst4Y

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/mainetoday-centralmaine/name/maisie-knowles-obituary?id=17293900

----

https://archive.ph/GORG7

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/waterville-me/maisie-knowles-7159822

An article about Long Creek that mentions Maze Knowles.

 I found this article, it's from a socialist publication called Pines and Roses. It mentions Maze briefly.

https://pineandroses.org/news/maine-youth-justice-no-prisons-for-children/

Our old bus driver passed away.

Someone passed away recently who knew Maze a bit, not related to us, but he say Maze every morning, 5 days a week. Bus driver Ben. He saw all of us grow up, seeing us all of us every morning as he picked us up to take us to VCS. He saw me, David and Maze all grow up. 

>Benjamin Bird Twitchell III, 77, passed away surrounded by loved ones on Friday, Feb. 24, 2023 after a long and valiant battle with prostate cancer.

https://www.centralmaine.com/2023/03/03/obituarybenjamin-bird-twitchell-iii-2/?fbclid=IwAR0Qkkv2G8IKwSZujO7WqY2ECTsT4dw3vpluPT4wMIwmU8lZ-qAPL6ZrNsI

https://archive.is/BIwxO

https://web.archive.org/web/20230417072836/https://www.centralmaine.com/2023/03/03/obituarybenjamin-bird-twitchell-iii-2/

Our Nana and Grandpa.

Since I don't have anywhere else to post it, I'll post it here.

Here are links to the obituaries, and archives of the obituaries, of our grandparents. I'm using the www.archive.is service to archive the obituaries because I do not know how long they will be kept online. (Please note that some of these obituaries state that I am married. I am not and have never been married, it was the mistake of whoever wrote the obituary and other newspapers kept reprinting it. I don't know why they thought that I was ever married. Also they spelled my last name wrong but everyone always does so whatever.)

Our Nana, Shirley McQuillan, the woman who raised my mother and always hid her french from us.

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/waterville-me/shirley-mcquillan-10841354

https://archive.ph/TSC3J

https://townline.org/obituaries-for-thursday-july-28-2022/

https://archive.is/3HM1X

https://www.tributearchive.com/obituaries/11247478/Shirley-McQuillan

https://archive.is/R4gDB    < This archive is broken for some reason? Maybe the page loads slower than the archival tool reads.

https://darik.news/maine/obituary-shirley-a-mcquillan-centralmaine-com/621412.html

https://archive.ph/qlCcR

Our Grandpa, John McQuillan, the most gentle and patient man I have ever met, who always smiled and laughed at everything.

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/waterville-me/john-mcquillan-7696947

https://archive.is/TtbEQ

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/mainetoday-centralmaine/name/john-mcquillan-obituary?id=12322079

https://archive.ph/bWmMY

https://www.centralmaine.com/2022/07/24/obituaryshirley-a-mcquillan/

https://archive.is/6Rxw8

Both our Nana and Grandpa loved Maze very much. He would always be excited when we were to visit them and Maze was always welcome in their home and at their table.

Blank FB post?

 On one of Mazes facebook accounts there is this blank post. It exists, it's there. And at some point two people liked it. But there's nothing there. Normally if the content was deleted there would be a box with words which says so. But here there is just nothing, it looks broken. What was it he posted about?

https://www.facebook.com/CharlesKenKnowles/posts/pfbid0w3TyYPu7iqShy5cxQLCdVWyLizufapZ7xnAFtZihjzoeafS75KWzD8Cozji1YTZ5l

I don't understand it. And it's a little upsetting. It's a little something he did, gone forever.