FOR years I tried to construct a viable idea of my long-gone father by piecing together scraps of other people’s memories. I was only 6 when he died, and most of what I knew of him came from my mother, who considered him the embodiment of evil and tried at every opportunity to turn me against him. If I was going to be able to counter her poisonous tales, I needed empirical evidence of his humanity.

It was 45 years ago this past March that my father suffered a major heart attack at home, near midnight, right after Angie Dickinson chatted up Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show.” I know this because as soon as Johnny introduced Angie, my father sent me to bed. But his laughter drifted down the hall and into the small room I shared with my sister. This was my sole clue that in the instant before his heart betrayed him, he was a happy man.

My father’s death stole many things from me, including the sound of his voice. For instance, I have tried to remember his laughter from that final night  its timbre and roll  but my mind is an erased tape. I possess the knowledge of his laughter and of Angie and Johnny’s bubbly white noise but have no memory of the sounds themselves. It’s as if I have garnered these details by reading a biography penned by a stranger.

My mother was a violent woman who preened in sorrow. Earlier on the night my father died  dusk had just fallen and we were driving from bar to bar, looking for his car  she said, her own eyes lighted with liquor, “Your father is nothing but a monster who does not love you.”