Today it has been three and a half years since we found Leif lifeless on the floor of his kitchen, the gun he used laying on the kitchen counter. I will spare you the details of the scene and how hard it was to walk into that apartment and find him. 

It doesn't seem like it could possibly be that long. We still talk about him so often, it's almost as if he never left, except that too much of the time, those conversations about why he died. 

Nearly every day there is something I do, or we do, that wish he was here for advice, help, education, or just companionship.

In the past week, I've been trying to set up a new computer for my mother. Leif did that the last time she needed one, just a couple of months before he died. It was so much easier for him than for me, both physically and with his better knowledge of Windows. 

You wouldn't think I'd still be finding new uses for things he left behind, but one of his cables turned out to be needed for Mom's new system.

You wouldn't think I'd still be finding new photos or learning new things about him, either, but one of his friends recently sent me a photo of him I'd never seen before, and today I finally put an old laptop hard drive that was laying in a drawer of his into an enclosure and looked to see what was on it. Sadly, though, nothing personal except a photo I took of him standing by his beloved RX-8. 

I still wonder why that laptop hard drive was out of the laptop, where the computer itself went. I thought it was stolen in his apartment burglary, but then why is the drive here? It was an inexpensive off brand machine he got when he bought something else, but it was no longer with his things. I do remember him telling me what happened to it ... but not WHAT he told me.

There are so many questions still in our minds.

There are so many feelings that now are mostly buried, day-to-day, but it doesn't take much to bring them to the surface. I was having coffee with Peter W. at Starbucks in the Brandon Mall on Saturday, across the way from the Apple Store, a place Leif loved as much as I do, and something that came up about Leif brought tears to my eyes. It was one of the things I had come to the Apple store to find out about. Leif's old iPhone from the fall of 2007 that I've been using as an iTouch was no longer working and I wanted to find out if it could be fixed. 

No, not likely, and what brought tears to my eyes was the thought of getting rid of it, yet another thing he used that would not longer be here. That, and talking about the Nokia phone he brought me in July 2007. I'm still using it, and changing service or getting a new phone will cut me off from that. Silly? Emotional? Maybe, but it's the truth. I still have text messages from him on that phone, the last ones he ever sent to me about saving a turtle from traffic. He could save a turtle, but he couldn't save himself.

I will always, always miss him.

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This photo was another he took at the same time as the angry one I posted yesterday. It, too, was taken on November 22, 2007, Thanksgiving, around 6:00 a.m. after he had been up all night. One year before that, Thanksgiving had been a happy time for him, at least for awhile that fall. How terribly life changed, and how fast.