It’s interesting the things we can, and can’t remember.  I don’t remember my first time running to catch up to the Ice Cream man. Whether I chose a popsicle or cone. The first time I rode a bike without having the seat held. Or the first time I felt butterflies on a swing that went just a little too high, leaving me suspended for a moment in the air before snapping the chains with my weight, barreling me down towards the wood chip covered earth in a crescent moon swoop.

But I do remember the last time I heard his voice. He looked just like my father; but hunched, old, and gray.

“Mandaaaaaaa”, he drew everyone’s attention to me as I toddled into the hospital room.

“Give Grandpa a kiss.” My Grandmother held me over him. I had the bad habit of climbing onto his medical bed, which my mother broke me out of as he declined further and more tubes ran out from under his covers.

Lingering next to his scruffy cheek, he smelled of Anbesol and aftershave. Each breath he took, I heard wheezing and the faintest sound of something rattling around in his lungs. 

Gram lifted me back to sit in her lap on the wooden foldable chair next to his bed. My Great Aunt Mary was there, leaning against the heater.

“My, oh my, what pretty curls you have!” she said, rolling her finger around a spiral curl and tucking it behind my ear. 

“Can I have them?!” Her bright red lips had pink cracks in them from the lipstick she’d left behind on the styrofoam cup half-filled with coffee in her hand. I shook my head and raised my shoulder to my cheek, bashfully.

“Oh, sweet girl! I’m only joking, they look far too pretty on you!” Aunt Mary thinks I’m pretty. 

A nurse came in and tried to adjust one of the tubes over Grandpa’s face, under his nose. 

“NO! I don’t need it! GOD DAMMIT!” He ripped the oxygen cord over his forehead.

“Louie, just leave it on.” Gram usually didn’t help when Grandpa was mad. I hopped off her lap and went by the window. I pulled my Lisa Frank coloring book from my busy bag. I flipped through the pages. Amongst dolphins and leopards and stars and sparkles, I saw a Panda bear. Panda was my nickname. I’d give it to Grandpa. He’d be happy again.

An hour or so later, everyone was in the waiting room, crying. My parents were on the other side of a glass window. Mommy was talking to a doctor in a white coat. Daddy wouldn’t look up. I asked Gram where Grandpa was going, wondering why everyone was so sad.

“Heaven,” she said.

I didn’t know where that was, but it sounded far. I was angry he would leave me behind. I scribbled across the half-colored cartoon Panda, snapping my crayon in half with the pressure I applied. Slamming the severed Crayola down on the vinyl loveseat, I turned my back to everyone, pulled my knees to my chest, and crossed my arms. 

“I won’t miss him.”

“You say that now.” Gram tsked and shook her head. Eyes set in her lap, staring at her clasped hands as she flicked her thumbnails over one another. Back and forth. Click, click, click.

“I WON’T!” 

He cussed, and he didn’t even say goodbye before he went to Heaven. 

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Amanda Izzo is a writer and mixed-media artist from Boston, MA. After years of writing privately, she’s begun to share detailed recollections of her life and youth in the form of creative nonfiction, in the hopes of connecting to other readers and shy creatives alike. Recently, her work has been published in Levitate Magazine, Braver Collective and OddBall Magazine.