Uncle Richard

In Memoriam

Richard Andree Schroeder

November 12, 1931 – January 7, 2024

Well, my friends, it happened: Uncle Richard has left us. Although it’s painful to contemplate, we are no longer blessed with his presence. As it is each time we lose someone dear to us, it’s hard to believe there can be a world without him.

As a small memorial, I want to meditate for a while about the things that seemed especially him. The qualities and the interests, the personality, the things he taught me about life just by being himself.

He was, and forever is, my Woodsy Uncle. Even if he were not a conservation agent, he still would have Touched the Earth, knew the names of all the plants and animals, observed and knew their interconnections and stories. Each life-form has a personality. There is a sense of wonder about, and an appreciation of even the least of these. Black morels appear a little earlier than the yellow ones. Black widow silk is intensely strong; you can identify it just by pressing against a single strand of it. Bald eagles, squirrels, leeches, and lichens: the world of nature is complex and beautiful. All critters are welcome.

He was adventurous, apparently from Day One. Where didn’t he go? What was he afraid to do? I don’t know. If something didn’t turn out the way you’d imagined, if you lost your compass or fell in the water, or if you fell onto a cactus in the dark, if you survived, you’ll be fine. In fact, you’re better off, because now you’ve learned something. And best of all, you now have a story to tell! He made a necklace for himself out of his own finger bones.

Which brings us to his artistic, crafty, creative side. From his grandpa, I guess, he inherited his sense of “make do with what you got,” his ability to figure out a way to make it work. His dioramas, his model planes, his ability to carve, his prowess with knots. When I was young, he once created a bow and arrow for me in the space of about five minutes: a small hickory sapling was trimmed at angles, notched, and bent, and a piece of kitchen string looped to each end. . . . Signs of his craftiness remain at our house, where over the years he fixed this and that, or repaired a windchime, or whatever. I can tell it’s his work because of the unique solutions and his attention to detail. He wasn’t afraid to fail, at times, either; he plowed ahead: Several years ago, he had a saying, which I copied and posted above my desktop; it went something like this: “If it’s jammed, force it—if it breaks, it needed fixing anyway.” (It turns out that such cut-to-the-chase advice can apply to manuscript editing, too!)

His artistic side blossomed in watercolors and oils, which sadly he decided to destroy several years ago, but we remember that side of him, that skill and patience. The painter’s eye is unique; it is as clever as the gambler’s dice, and it sees through What Is into all the realms of possibility. I honor his artistry . . . I honor it.

And of course, although he worked in paints, his first medium was words: his stories and poems. The ones he wrote down, and the ones he regaled us with whenever we got together. Soon after he died, Sue shared with me a dream she’d had, in which Uncle Richard was at a gathering with everyone, “holding forth,” telling stories and laughing, getting everyone else laughing, too. I think it was a sign that everything is okay, and we will all be okay without him. With his stories, you could never quite tell at what point the narrative would veer away from total reality into fiction and fantasy. And you know, ultimately, that’s all we’re ever left with: Is this history “true”? We must interpret it, exercise the muscle that distinguishes between the treasure and the sediment, the detritus. Sometimes the best truth is in the fiction. Sometimes what initially appears to be detritus is the real treasure.

Uncle Richard, despite his sometimes gruff demeanor, was a romantic and a nostalgic. He could find meaning and significance in all kinds of seemingly mundane, insignificant objects. His collection of writings bear this out; he teaches his reader (as he taught everyone who listened to him) that you can create from the most pedestrian topic a small, inspirational sermon about the Things That Really Matter. The necklace he made from the last bite of his mom’s last batch of lepkuchen. When we bought the house on Elm Street, there was a note on the refrigerator in Richard’s hand. It was about the aging process. Grandma had adored it: “This morning, I got up and put myself on like an old sweater. Holes in the elbows? I don’t mind—I made them myself!”

Things in our universe cannot last forever. Nature teaches us that everything must be recycled and transformed. Energy is neither created nor destroyed; the quantity of mass is conserved over time; the nutrient cycle, the carbon cycle, geologic cycles; physics, chemistry, biology demonstrate that everything that exists will be transformed. Nothing lasts forever. Raindrops wear away stones. Even our earth will eventually rejoin the sun and be reduced to its fundamental elements—to be combined later into all new, miraculous things. The detritus will become new types of mosses, new trees, new clouds, new rocks, and new fossils for someone to wonder about.

So, reluctantly, I guess it’s okay that Uncle Richard has departed from us. It’s not like there’s a choice; we have to accept it. The holes in the elbows? He made them himself. Was it jammed, was it broken? It needed fixing anyway. He left us with so many . . . so many stories to keep telling, and the impetus to find new adventures and stories to create about them. He’s gone from us and rejoined the cycle of transformation, the universal state of eternity. This is the way of nature; it’s part of the magic and mystery of our world, the Nature he honored his whole life.