I wanted to come up here today to talk about some of my memories of Max, because about the only thing that we can do in the face of such pain is to think about and remember what a special guy he was.

I first met Max when he was four years old. I was 11, and my mom was dating this weird new guy who would later become my wonderful stepfather, Tom.

I guess I figured if my mom was going to get married, I might as well get a cool stepbrother out of it. And I did.

When I met him, Max had curly brown hair and an angelic little face. One of my earliest memories of him is in a Chinese restaurant in Watertown. Max would walk around the restaurant talking to people sitting at their tables. We called it ``making friends.’’ Max is ``off making friends,’’ we’d say.

We all remember the time we went sailing and Tom had to tie Max, who was sleeping at the time, to the boat. We remember skiing trips to Sunday River in Maine. We remember going to Key West this winter and playing touch football in front of our bungalow. Tom joked that we were like the Kennedys.

I remember how, on that trip to Florida, I realized how gentle Max was. He easily beat me at arm wrestling, yet he would never fight back if I gave him a little sock to the stomach.

We all remember how Max had started taking tennis lessons, so he could improve his game, stop running around his backhand and compete with the rest of the family. We remember how, for some reason, Max decided that his e-mail address should be "Mung Chide." I never had any idea what it meant.

A month ago, while Max was on spring break, he came out to visit me in California. We had never really hung out alone for several days before, and it worked out great. We walked around Chinatown, went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, went on a hike. He played frisbee with my friends. We snuck him into a bar one night and got him a margarita. He was hanging out with people who were 26, 27, even 30 years old and acting comfortable and mature. I was proud of him.

I remember how Max insisted on visiting the TransAmerica Pyramid in downtown San Francisco. There’s no observation deck there, but on the bottom floor there are four TV screens connected to video cameras. With a remote control, you can operate the cameras, scanning and zooming back and forth through the city. Max was fascinated by this. We stayed there for at least a half-hour.

Max also couldn’t get enough of the Exploratorium, the famous hands-on science museum in San Francisco. We stayed there for about five hours, as Max played with science experiment after science experiment. That day I had horrible allergies. I was sneezing every 30 seconds and felt truly miserable. But Max kept himself happy. My nose was running like a geyser, but he didn’t bother me or act disappointed. He was just happy to be hanging out together.

Perhaps the hardest thing about this tragedy is that it feels like Max was just coming into his own as a young man, just getting established with a cool group of friends, just starting a relationship with a young woman. He was changing from a kid who spent way too much time playing video games to a mature college student with a bright future ahead.