“If the sky isn’t falling and the sun is still shining, then you still have time to live,” he told his eight year old niece, patting her head. She looked up at him, her big blue eyes confused and curious, and all he could do was smile. Smile, because he knew that the next few months would be hell. And come October, though he didn’t know it then, he did in October; he would be kneeling on the tailgate of his truck, staring through the loop from the ceiling in which he had helped lift the engine of his dad’s hot rod into his car not five days before. And as he leaned over that sharp wire, and he closed his eyes, all he could see was his niece’s big blue, curious eyes staring up at him. And he gave one last smile, a smile for her to hold onto for the rest of her life, before he slipped away from her.