A Father's Day Tale of Joy and Loss

Photo by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash

I thought it would be a nice change of pace today to share this story written by my own father, one of the biggest inspirations behind my writing. You can subscribe to his profile here (that way, he’ll feel compelled to share more of his stories in the future).

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As a musician, I’d sometimes be hired through an agent, knowing little about an event or the family throwing the party. So it was, one Sunday afternoon about 20 years ago. I’d put together a jazz trio for a house party, and I was as anonymous to the family as they were to me.

As we set up, I had a wonderful time chatting with the caterer, talking about growing up in the neighborhood, getting into the wedding business, the meaning of life… You know the drill. It was only when we traded names that the day took a turn towards the life-changing.

She couldn’t believe it was me! Joy began telling me stories about myself and my brother and sister that absolutely no one could have known, stories about our childhood dog, Deena, about my brother’s stuffed tiger, Tippy, about my sister’s precocious inquisitiveness, about our leaky roof. But even more, she understood who we were back then in a fairly profound way, and was not surprised at the people we’d each become. Then the coupe de grace: she had named her own son after me! As the guests arrived, she confessed our connection: our favorite family baby-sitter! I was astounded, but had to get to work or, as we call it in the biz, playing.

A few minutes later, however, things got considerably deeper still. A silver-haired man came up to the band and asked, somewhat gruffly, “Which of you fellas is Ulansey?” When I replied, he motioned to follow him into the next room which held a dining room table surrounded by a group clearly at ease with each other, bantering non-stop as I entered. And suddenly I was in fact the guest of honor, as my caterer friend Joy, a friend of the family, had told them who was playing in the next room. These old farts were the gang of mischevous friends my father’s brother had often told me about, the gang who’d co-created my father’s quietly unnerving sense of mirth and humor that too few people in later life had understood.

Later life, sadly, is a misnomer. My father, Glenn, was a doctor in the old-school sense, who died at 57 of a heart attack. He was of the school of medicine who made house calls throughout the city in the dead of night, who visited hospitalized patients twice daily, who accepted baskets of fruit as payment in full, whose office staff was essentially just his little black book of indecipherables. He had died when I was 19, in full late adolescent rebellion mode. In my childhood, he had been so busy saving others that I never felt I’d gotten to know him, and his somewhat fabled dry wit had been lost on this proto-hippy.

So, suddenly and with no preparation, I was now surrounded by his friends from childhood, from high school and college. And no preparation could have helped. “Your dad was the greatest man I ever knew,” said one. “Saved my life twice and wouldn’t take a dime,” said another. “He made me get a heart bypass when it was just an experiment. Hell, if he’d followed his own damn advice he’d be sitting here today!” Then came stories of pranks, stories that came too quickly for me to absorb into memory. But through it all came a sense of my father’s playful kindness that had touched them each for life.

Feeling dazed, as in a dream, I had to go back to the other room, pick up the saxophone, and pretend that I hadn’t just been touched to the core of my being. Certainly, playing background standards at a house party wasn’t the place for expressing profound feelings through music, so I let my fingers do my thinking for the rest of the day, trying to contain the delight, joy and sense of loss that nearly overwhelmed me.