Bryan’s Song

Of Miles and Time

Bryan’s Song

Mortality

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            I remember the day he was born.

            Uncle Bill and I were plowing the field around the Indian ruins. I was just a little kid settled comfortably in my spot between the seat and the left fender on the Allis Chalmers. I was there when my uncle needed me. One of my jobs was to help pull the trip release on the 2-way rollover plow. Anybody with any sense knew that was important.

 It was with that frame of reference that things crashed to a halt when Nana drove up and yelled that Aunt Judy was in labor.

“Oh, I’ve gotta’ go!” was my uncle’s response.

“Can’t you go later or even tomorrow?” was my thought if it didn’t actually come out of my mouth. “Why do you have to go at all?”

Things would never be quite the same.

Of Miles and Time

This has been a hard week.

Uncle Bill called me and told me Bryan passed away. That little baby that was born that day long ago has gone on before us. His life was not easy and, yet, he made little pretense about all the terrible things resulting from diabetes. He was diagnosed at age eight and for the next 50 years he fought it valiantly. Along the way, he experienced all the classic cruelties of its torment to his body. His sight was impaired. Through the reduction of circulation, his extremities were ravaged. And, then, a generation ago, his kidneys ceased to function, and he was put on a transplant list.

He received that gift along with a functioning pancreas in 1996. The doctors in Denver told him he would have ten years if rejection could be controlled. Our only witness to the difficulties living with that sentence was watching him lay out the handful of pills he had to take every time he ate. Never complaining, he had little sympathy for any short term, mundane dilemmas.

When our youngest daughter was retiring her California State Officer FFA jacket in April 1997, she asked him to be present for her farewell address and convention ceremony. His health continued to be a problem and he was unable to make the trip. Instead, he surprised her with a video, and it was shown to the assembled association as the proxy for his presence and the ceremonial removal and acceptance of her jacket. Others will remember segments of his message, but the lasting memory I have was his urging for her to reach for a star.

She was overwhelmed.

Bryan’s Song

We are in Ft. Collins today for Bryan’s memorial.

The significance, of course, is to pay respects to the passage of time and miles of his life through the relationship we all had with him. It will be difficult for everybody particularly for Aunt Judy and Uncle Bill, but there will be an assemblage of friends and family to make the transition more manageable.

It will also have a wondrous undertone and that is the 22^nd anniversary of his transplant. He stretched that ten years of window to 22. Everybody should take heart of such hope through medical miracles. It has been given to all of us not just those who struggle with such terrible, debilitating diseases. Bryan symbolizes that gift.

At the time of that day on the tractor, the gift of family was mostly taken for granted. At least it was in my case. I think we had lost only two great grandparents by that time (both of whom I had seen and still remember), but several more were still living as well as all sets of grandparents.

Such a blessing that was.

The basis of our foundation was family, and that started with fellowship. It took place around the kitchen table on Bell Canyon just west from the irrigation ditch in a network of support, and the outward demonstration was our grandparents’ love. Since then, every time we were together we talked about memories, stories, and laughter of events we shared.

An example is we didn’t pass biscuits. We tossed biscuits. When somebody needed one, a trip to the open oven was in order and a query was sounded.

“Who needs a biscuit?” and it was tossed to the respondent with the expectation that it would be caught regardless of how hot it was.

Bryan caught those biscuits just like everybody else. Together, we share that in a capsulated bond with nobody else. It was a snippet of our time, our lives, our family, and our closed world.

It is ours for the ages to come.

Mortality

This news all came during a dreaded birthday week.

Flippancy could be offered that years don’t matter, but they do! I’ve even taken to doing exercises, so I don’t look like an old man getting horseback. I’ve also practiced stepping to the ground when a horse reaches his last step, but that is getting harder and harder especially when I find myself stumbling around like a drunk trying to get my balance in the process.

I’ve got a grandson, though, and he is going to get his fill of me. We have him mounted on a horse that seems to fit. He also knows to take his hat off when he goes into the house as a continuing, generational demand from his Nana whom he knows only though our words.

When it comes to shear will and toughness, though, it will be recounted to him through our memory of the best model. He will be told that toughness must be accompanied by humility and grace. There will be a name in that lesson.

He will be told Bryan Rice was one tough, gracious human being, and … we miss him.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Lord, God we lift up this star to you … the son of Peter, the son of Lee, the son of Carl and the son of William.”