"Why are your eyes closed?"

I sighed, before saying "My dad…he always closed his eyes. On the couch, at the kitchen table on a Saturday morning, at every baseball game right before it started…hell, once he even did it during church service and fell asleep right in the middle of the sermon."

We both laughed, but she did harder than me. It was, unlike her, a memory to me. Happy injected, chuckle filled, but wistful and sad only now. Due to the fact he was…well…gone. There were no more church service nap sessions for him. His eyes had closed for the last time a long time ago.

But, of course, to her it was just another comical moment of the infamous T***** S**** **** Senior, my father, whom she had never meet and will not meet for some time. So she laughed harder than I.

Since, unlike me, she didn't feel a pang of grief stab at her heart, nor the dull ache of the death that had never really gone away. It didn't weigh her stomach down as though she had just consumed a truck full of cement.

After she recovered, I decided to continue my story after a polite pause. "I asked my dad that same question once," I said, a smile cutting its slow but sure path across my face. "And, he said 'Son…some moments are like kisses. They're more…satisfying, when you feel them. When you hear them. Smell them. Or, even taste them, depending on what you're doing Sometimes, it's just nice to sit back and hear. And feel. And smell. And taste. Just like a kiss. Special. Special in a way, that…it almost feels rude to open your eyes.'"

"Oh."

I laughed. "That was my response exactly."