Clyde D Bryan – birth, 2/5/1904

“HOME”

Christmas eve came and went,

The year’s most prestigious event,

Without one gift received or sent from home.

The place where once had been seen,

Things that build memory so keen,

When days were hard and times were lean, at home.^[1]

 

A lonely man knelt by his bed,

Wrinkled hands held his graying head,

As slowly these sad words he said down home,

“Lord, I don’t understand

All the ways of God with man;

Why I, alone, of all the clan am home.”

 

Then rising deliberately,

His hands toward heaven in a plea,

With eyes tear-blurred, he could not see his home.

He talked at length to His God,

‘Bout the graves under winter’s sod,

Where loved ones lay who used to trod in home.

 

“Amen,” he said, and clinched his prayer,

Between God, so gloriously fair,

And his mortal soul, earth-bound there, to home.

Satisfied that God’s way is best,

He blew out the light of his nest,

And gave the grate a log to bless the home.

 

He went to sleep that Christmas Eve,

Believing as saints do believe,

Trusting God, he’d no longer grieve ’round home.

For the three who’d passed death’s door,

To walk familiar paths no more,

Making him the last of four, now home.

 

Little did the gentleman dream,

That the world which sad did seem,

He’d be leaving ere sun’s first gleam lit home.

The foursome would that Christmas morn.

No longer to be sad and torn,

Gone now would be the long forlorn of home.

 

The close circle, broken of yore,

Then met [2] inside the Pearly Door,

The old man made the last of four come home.

They now were there in perfect love,

They’d traded partridge for the dove,

Never to say “Good-bye” above. THAT’S HOME!

                – eab, 12/76 (pre-23^rd )

Note the footnote.  Clyde D Bryan, my dad, was born this date (2/5/1904) in Murry City, Ohio.  This poem was not written about him but was penned just prior to his untimely death.  As some parallels existed it seemed fitting to place it here for Dad’s birthday.  One never fully gets over the loss of his dad. (He died before the sun came up on the 24th 1976.)

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^[1] My dad, Clyde D. Bryan, was severely burned on the 23^rd and died the morning of the of 24^th .  There was no premonition, yet dad was the last to die of his family of four. 

[2] I wish all four Bryans made heaven, but my poem is not claiming that.

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Phillips Brooks – birth, Dec. 13, 1835

“The Sky Can Still Remember”  (stanza 3)

O angels sweet and splendid, throng in our hearts and sing
The wonders which attended the coming of the King;
Till we too, boldly pressing where once the shepherds trod,
Climb Bethlehem’s Hill of Blessing, and find the Son of God.

Phillips Brooks born 12/13/1835 in Boston, Massachusetts.  He was a minister whose people sent him abroad for a year.  His schedule brought him to the Holy Land and on Christmas Eve, brought him to Bethlehem.  The little town (seen in 19th century “lighting”) helped him produced his simple but so loved Carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”   Brooks, who never married, loved children and they him.  After his death a story was told of a litttle girl’s reponce to her pastor being in heaven.  She is said to have said to her mother, “Oh mama, how happy the angels will be.”

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