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: