Begins at noon

Nancy, (Richard’s sister who is a musician) will be playing selected songs as guests trickle in (to the left or right of the entrance where there are two side rooms)

Things like a pack of Camel Straights, a few Sci-fi Novels, a coffee cup, a Hawaiian shirt, something Richard wood worked, his carpenter’s ruler, maybe a plant, something around camping/gardening, his little pink panther post it thing, unfrosted molasses Christmas cookies, the ceramic pumpkin that he glued back together when Kristen was pregnant are all placed on a special table for viewing.

Lisasia begins..

“Welcome friends, family, and community. My name is Lisasia, and I’m a Life Cycle Celebrant. It’s my honor to be here today in honor of Richard. On behalf of Richard’s family, I’d like to thank you all for being here. As we reflect on each person Richard said hello to in the community garden, the neighborhood children he looked after as they ran in and out of his house, or even the countless people he provoked into debate, it's easy to understand how the impact of one man’s life is unquantifiable, especially one as brilliant, boisterous, loving, and stubborn as Richard. 

We come here today to celebrate Richard’s life, to express gratitude alongside one another- as each person to your left, and to your right is connected by the impact of Richard the poet, the carpenter, the father, the friend.  

Because in this wild life, if we’re lucky enough to love- to gut out a house and make it something special, arm in arm with our very best friend, or to sit and talk politics with a brilliant father, or to have a strong big brother come and lift your Pinto up out of the snow with his bare hands, or to  feel deeply understood in the ways a sibling can understand us– if we’re lucky enough to love and be loved by a man like Richard, we have so much to say thank you for. 

We come here today to conjure stories, maybe ones with less technology, space exploration, parallel realities, and extraterrestrial life than the ones Richard couldn’t get enough of, but ones with all the connection and humanity he was just as deeply inspired by–the stories we can share with one another to keep alive the essence of who he was. An anarchist, a rabble rouser, a tinkerer, a guy in a Hawaiian shirt. 

 We know that death touches everyone, and everything, the birds and the flowers, fathers, siblings, friends. The stars in the sky even know birth and death, and we are certainly part of that symphony. In the beginning, life springs forward with a determined force, it grows and expands and becomes something as unique as our favorite flower, our pets, our most beloved kin.  Each life touches the world around it, equally as changed by life as it impacts life itself, in all of its beauty, color, and diversity. And then life continues on that trajectory, with momentum and force, unpredictably. Until one unbeknownst day, all that life force joins the likes of a star who has met its end, but still shares its light anywhere its light can reach. I think The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, one of Richard’s favorite poems, encapsulates that journey well. 

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep… (cont full poem)

…I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

We sit alongside one another today getting a little more familiar with grief. Acknowledging that, just as there are no maps to life and love, there is no map for loss- no shortcuts, no beginning, and no end. There isn’t a moment that makes saying goodbye easy, there isn’t a reassuring outline for what goodbye should look like, or sound like. May the space we co create here today be whole enough to hold us, as we hold one another– with the support of an indestructible bookshelf made by Richard himself. “

Dickie comes to the podium to deliver the obituary (I’ll step to the side of the podium to cue you)

Lisasia resumes..

Richard’s story

“Richard was a man who loved old things, just not the oldest con known to man– which, according to him, was religion. He loved oil lamps, steam engines, rotary phones– tried and true, sure things, like the work of his own hands. He was a man who cut straight to the center of things, sometimes as the antagonist, but also often as the balm, offering a simple and grounded kind of wisdom, or a chuckle to cut through the seriousness when it was needed most. He had an insatiable mind, which turned over things he loved and didn’t love, things he wholeheartedly agreed with, and things he’d consider irredeemable stupidity- he turned over all that he noticed as if he were smoothing pebbles, a habit he formed early, because there was so much to observe as the second youngest of six no doubt.  

Born on May 1st, 1954, during a snowstorm in Baldwin Wisconsin to parents farming his grandparents land, Richard would later call himself a Norwegian farmer turned city slicker, and a half ass Christian but a full-fledged atheist. After his parents moved their family of eight to Oakdale when Richard was five, they had each taken multiple jobs to adjust to city life. That meant the six children were thrown into the ring as each other’s mentor, teammate, confidant, and sometimes adversary, but mostly they were each other’s protectors, with Richard being especially protective of his little sister Nancy. He revered his older brothers Alfred and Norman, and sought motherly love from his eldest sister, Mindy. They were something like the boxcar children, only with a home instead of a box car. Even as a young boy and teenager Richard was the household handyman. He spent his time tinkering with anything he could find a creative way to engineer, attaching an old sewing machine to a bike, or rigging his guitar by adding three bass strings so he could play like John Koerner. 

Richard was 14 when tragedy struck his family, and his beloved brother Alfred was killed in the Vietnam war. Alfred’s passing sent a deep current of loss through his family, a unit that had fortified themselves with an unbreakable bond. He became somewhat of a troubled teen, broken hearted and antiestablishment, he began skipping school to smoke cigarettes. At that time his big brother Norman had an apartment by the U of M where he spent a lot of his time. Norman would encourage him to make better choices, and Richard understood Norman in a way no one else could. 

And now,

Nancy will sing “After the Gold Rush” by Neil Young”

Nanacy sings

Lisasia resumes…

“After high school, Richard did a short stint in the Navy before moving to River Falls. He lived right down the street from his sister Nancy and would frequent a bar called Johnny’s. He made lifelong friends in River Falls, best friends like Doug Champeau. Befriending people who appreciated his sense of humor and his love of literature and politics, he had found a sense of belonging in a new kind of family there, one that he chose. 

Richard never missed the chance to compliment a beautiful woman. He had a contagious charm about him, the ability to draw you in to whatever he was excited about, to have you anticipating what in the world would come out of his mouth, whether it be humor, or some sort of professorial thesis, or Pangur Ban, a 9th century poem about a monk’s cat. 

After spending some time with his new found family in River Falls, Richard moved to the West Bank, and after he had had his fill of drinking beer and talking politics there, he decided to buy an empty house in Saint Paul, a place where, unbeknownst to him, he’d spend the rest of his life tinkering, drinking coffee, reading sci-fi, and accomplishing his proudest achievement, raising his two sons alongside his beloved wife. 

Richard and Kristen met at Palmers in 19??. She was set to move to Oregon but never made it there, because just a few months after they met, he asked her to be his wife. How could she resist a man who would recite poetry from memory in the middle of a conversation? A man who told her she was beautiful every day? She said yes, choosing a life of champagne and beer, of poetry and Camel straights, of neighborhood kids and a community garden, trips to Menards, and a man who made her laugh every day. 

They brought their first son home to that house in 1994. He was named Alfred, affectionately called Alphie, after Richard’s beloved late brother. And since Richard knew how important siblings could be, they brought little Richard, also known fondly as Dickie home in 1996. Richard didn’t know if he’d ever get to be a father, so when he looked upon his two precious sons, he was determined to give them a life better than his own.”

*Nancy comes to the podium to read The Laughing Heart (she says it reminds her of the way he talked to his boys)

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life

don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is a light somewhere.

it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.

take them.

you can't beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

and the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.

know it while you have it.

you are marvelous

the gods wait to delight

in you.

Newly laid off from his job at the printing press, he told Kristen he wanted to take a stab at being a stay-at-home dad. He went into being a stay-at-home dad boldly, whether or not he knew what he was doing. Kristen would come home to find that they were suspiciously low on their prized coffee beans, only to realize Richard had turned their home into a kid cafe, with bottomless joe for the neighborhood mom’s. When a kid from the neighborhood missed the bus, Richard would be there to put the child’s bike in the garage and drive them to school with something like Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones playing through the speakers of his truck. 

“I don’t listen to these guys because I agree with them,” he would tell his boys, “I listen to them because I want to know how stupid some people think.” Richard was fond of a playful debate; he’d often play devil's advocate so well you wouldn’t be able to pin down his actual position. He was a homebody who was quick to make a friend, add them on Facebook, and sometimes get unfriended because he had such fun being a rabble rouser. He loved people though, even if he said he didn’t. Anyone who knew him well would tell you he was a good man. 

His wife and kids would tell you he was a night owl, as brilliant minds often are. From two-four in the morning he’d take a break from all that talk radio and listen to music with Marceline the wonder cat always close by. He loved his bird feeders, and his plants, his neighbors and his rotary phone, his camel straights, and his carpenter's ruler. He loved watching baseball and reading sci-fi, Perkins and unfrosted molasses cookies. He loved helping his neighbors and working in the community garden.

The last poem in his notepad reads:

 ‘its my white framed world

 my favorite spruce, bowed

 winding down in search of sunlight’

(I give a cue)

Alfie approaches the podium to read a Eulogy

Ritual

One option would be to bring one of Richard’s plants and invite people to write on a tag with string for hanging on the plant, a goodbye, a thank you, something they’ll always remember about him perhaps, then they could hang the tag on the plant- creating a memory tree

Another way to do this, since Richard’s plants are pretty large, would be to get a new/smaller plant, or to explore what it would be like for the boys to wood work something tree-like with left overs Richard may have had lying around from his projects 

Guests would be given the option to read their tag at the podium if they wish

Lisasia resumes..

Saying goodbye

Often, we come to know grief is really just a mountain of gratitude we wish we still had the opportunity to express to someone we love. If only the chance to sit in a Perkins listening to Richard recite The Road to Mandalay presented itself one last time.  Today marks the day we say goodbye to Richard in the flesh. It is a complicated irony that we come to understand the very depth of our love at the hour of goodbyes. But love is not lost at this hour, it’s somehow more vivid than before- revealing the permanent imprint Richard has had on each person lucky enough to know him. 

‘Tis a fearful thing

to love what death can touch.

A fearful thing

to love, to hope, to dream, to be –

to be,

And oh, to lose.

A thing for fools, this,

And a holy thing,

a holy thing

to love.

For your life has lived in me,

your laugh once lifted me,

your word was a gift to me.

To remember this brings painful joy.

‘Tis a human thing, love,

a holy thing, to love

what death has touched.

-Yehuda HaLevi

So we close this space with a tender farewell, saying goodbye to a husband, a father, and beloved cat friend. Goodbye to Richard the wordsmith, the gardener, the man whose life was made full by each of you in this room. We say goodbye to his quips and his pantlessness, carrying with us his story and his love for the rest of our lives. To you, Richard, we say thank you, and rest well.”

Lisasia announces that a luncheon will be had through back right doors of funeral home..