Obituary for Melany Rose Schroeder (Palleson)
Obituary, Words of Tribute and a Love Story by Richard Schroeder, Melany’s husband for 47 years....
Melany Rose Schroeder (nee Palleson), the love of my life, mother of our children, business partner extraordinaire and my true best friend forever, passed away peacefully in her sleep at Eagle Ridge Hospital, Port Moody on the morning of December 10, 2020, one day short of our 47th anniversary. She was in the hospital for one week only. Thankfully, her final pain was short lived. Cancer was the Dark Villain in this story. Melany was born August 3, 1952 in New Westminster, BC.
Because a traditional funeral gathering is not an option at this time, I have pulled together some of the words I might have awkwardly tried to deliver as Melany’s Eulogy.
On her side of the family, Melany leaves behind her mother Shirley, brother Rob, his special friend Naomi and Rob’s son, Cody, his wife Anna and their son Elias, Rob’s daughter Courtney plus some aunts, uncles, nieces and cousins. Melany’s dad, Larry and her grandparents died some years ago.
On the Schroeder side of the family, Melany leaves our daughter Allison, her husband Ryan plus their children George, Jack and Samuel, .... our son Aaron and his wife Reagan and their daughter Charlie, ... our son Ben and his soon to be bride, Mojgan and their two fuzzy cats, ... and me.
I woke up December 11th morning (our 47th anniversary), and It finally hit me hard. Melany was not coming home again. Despite having great adult children, grandchildren, business activities and a few good friends, she was not going to be with me anymore. The words, ’til death do us part, just became real. Melany and I were almost like a single entity over our entire life together. We were more like a set, not individual pieces. We genuinely liked being together, whether at work or play. We teased and joked with each other all the time, just like best friends, which we definitely were.
If you knew Melany early in her life or in more recent times, let me tell you a little bit about her that you might not know. She and I both started our lives as two of those lucky kids who had good, kind, caring and honest parents. Having that strong start in life was like winning a lottery ticket. That’s how I see it, looking back.
I knew Melany since elementary school and from the neighborhood. I was one year older than her and it was not considered cool to pursue younger girls at school in those days, even one year younger. As a 13-year-old “businessman”, I used to sharpen Melany’s ice skates. I remember hoping that Melany would come by herself to pick up the skates that her mother had dropped off. Sometimes she did, and I liked those sweet moments. She once mentioned that she had marched in parades and knew how to twirl and catch a baton. She didn’t say it in a bragging way. Using my adult brain today, I think she was trying to catch my interest, but my 13-year-old brain wasn’t reading the signals. I always thought Melany was a real cutey through junior and senior high school, but we each had our own different groups of friends. As it happened, my girlfriends in high school were mostly blonde. I don’t know how it worked out that way. It was not intentional. Melany would always tease me about, “my blondes”, as she called them, when we crossed paths during my grade 11 and 12 years. Looking back, how dumb was I to miss those flashing light expressions of interest? The answer is, very dumb indeed. I used to see her around at school, parties and cruising at the local car-hop drive-ins during our high school years. Things didn’t start to heat up for us until May of 1970, after I returned from an interrupted motorcycle trip that was supposed to end up in South America. An engine failure brought me back home. That engine failure started a chain reaction of good fortune events for me. My unfocused life changed overnight. Within days of my return home to Canada, Melany and I bumped into each other at a local soul music dance club, The Groove Yard. I had never taken her there or anywhere else on an actual date. It was at that chance meeting where she invited me to take her to her high school grad (prom). Was it just chance? I wish I could ask her that question now. She was a friend and my occasional dance buddy, and I thought there might be a good after-grad party, so I said yes. I am not sure how she viewed that first date. For me, the first date was fun, but it delivered an outcome that I did not foresee. That first date gave us a solid re-start point to really get to know each other slowly over the next several months. What had I been missing for all those years that I viewed her only as a friend? As I got to know Melany, and she got to know me, I became increasingly amazed and ultimately overcome by what I was discovering. I fell totally and helplessly in love with her. I was only 19, but I knew this was going to be forever. I am not a guy who says that sort of thing out loud, but today seems like a good day to say it. We had more than a superficial teenage attraction. I loved absolutely every new thing I learned about Melany. She was genuine. She was kind, considerate, funny, great to be around, inspiring, sexy and very smart. She was the whole package. My princess also treated me like her prince, then and right up to the end. While my buddies at the time were enjoying the free love phenomena of the late 60s and early 70s, I was not interested. I had found the one true Love of My Life. I know she felt the same way. You can’t fake that sort of thing for very long, and definitely not for 50 years.
Our life together has been intertwined with our business activities since day one. That business collaboration started about 1971. I was a suit-and-tie wearing, Lincoln Continental driving, cosmetic sales entrepreneur and she was my #1 beauty advisor. We felt like Bonnie and Clyde, only with lipstick instead of guns. We sold cosmetics direct to consumers. I went door to door booking cosmetic parties and she did the party presentations and made the sales. I was a distributor of Koscot Kosmetics. They were an early type of network marketing company. I performed a high energy blackboard presentation at the distributor recruitment meetings and Melany did the beauty advisor recruitment parts of the program. We were a team. Melany was fearless and we motivated each other to keep doing better. She also supervised a small group of other beauty advisors on our team. That was her first management position.
We soon opened our first retail wig and cosmetic shops in Surrey, then New Westminster as three partners, including my mother. Among her other talents, Melany was also a skilled seamstress. She did a feature window in our shop offering that service. She made wedding and formal dresses to order. I worked part time behind the scenes in the business and kept my travelling welding supply salesman job until we started to make enough money to pay me something each month. Melany and I were both living with our parents at the time, so we didn’t need much. Later, after our wholesale wig business was bringing in good revenue, I secretly rented and furnished an apartment near the business and took Melany to look at “my” new apartment one afternoon. I had been plotting this maneuver for a couple of months. She was surprised, but even more surprised with my marriage proposal, including a Justice of the Peace courthouse appointment for the next day. The Marriage License cost was $7.50. I just found the old receipt. We were married and moved in together as husband and wife that evening, December 11, 1973. Melany got along great with my mother, before and after we got married. My dad loved Melany too. She became the new daughter he never had. My mom remained working with our wholesale wig and beauty products business until she retired at 80. In the latter years of my mom’s life, Melany took on much of the responsibility of helping my mom with her day-to-day needs. I can’t leave our kids out of this picture. Allison, Aaron and Ben also did a lot to support their Granny, right up to her final days. Our kids grew up in the business with us as each one was born. I must also give credit at this time to Melany for doing the lion’s share of raising our children. I was there as the dad figure, but she did most of the real work. One of my dad’s (Grampa Ben) greatest joys in his life, was when he helped us blast, burn and clear our forest acreage to build our first house. He had worked as a logger in younger years, and loved to show off his lumberjack skills to us amateurs. Melany didn’t mind getting dirty when needed. She was right there in the mud with her bib overalls and rubber boots during the whole build. We fell truckloads of large trees to sell.
There is not enough time and space to include all of the great in-between years and landmark moments in our lives leading up to present day. Those years were mostly sweet and rewarding. We had three great kids and had the chance to watch them grow up. What a gift that has been. Our little Mom and Pop wig and cosmetic business eventually evolved into two significant companies, Nutri-Nation Functional Foods Inc. and Bio-Care Laboratories Inc. plus an industrial property business. We had many product line evolutions through the years. Not everything we tried worked out. As Poor Richard’s Distributing Corp, we sold wigs, cosmetics and fashion jewelry to retailers and we had a separate company called The Silk Garden for a few years. They marketed artificial flowers and plants. Those businesses were sold off or closed along the way. Bio-Care was our first homerun hit. It in turn allowed us to fund and launch Nutri-Nation, which became a much bigger story. Work was fun and exciting for us most of the time. Melany was without fear when it came to considering new opportunities. She only said no to me if a proposal was weak on logic or too high in risk. We kept emotions out of those business decisions. Our life together was not all work. We usually added on vacation days to business trips. Our kids went to Disneyland almost every other year during their childhood. We had business in California and other states, and often stayed an extra week or so to be tourists. We did take some actual non-business vacations, usually by boat around the Gulf and San Juan Islands. Melany also took frequent friends and family vacations to Mexico and Hawaii without me. I didn’t care much for laying around the beach or pool getting a sunburn. For the last two years, we have also lived part time in Harrison Hot Springs. That has been much like a vacation for us too. We have had good fortune and accomplished a lot in our life together. Our three adult children have all grown into competent, kind and productive adults. That is our #1 accomplishment. We checked off that box some years ago. They each manage important parts of the family enterprise now. I see Melany in their words, thought processes and actions daily.
In recent times, Melany’s main role has been Chief Financial Officer. In reality, she has always done much more. She has been a true equal partner and can take equal credit for any business and personal success we have achieved. Not only was Melany the “mother” of many of our business projects, she was also a mother figure and mentor to some of our staff members and others outside of work.
Melany and I started to slow down our work commitments over the last two or three years. We both still love to work, but not all the time. Her intention was to have more Grandma time and less Boss time. She has cherished her 6 great years as Grandma, but was really looking forward to the end of Covid to jump deeper into that Grandma roll, hopefully for a long time to come. We thought there would be more time.
You will notice that I seem to have placed myself in almost every scene of this love story. I didn’t intend that when I started to write, but Melany’s story really is our story. I could not tell her story any other way. I wanted to share these little pieces of my best friend’s life with you. If you are reading this sad, yet happy story, you probably know and care about Melany and our family. I sincerely thank you for your connection. As Allison told our Team at work the afternoon of Melany’s passing, ... Don’t worry...The show must go on. For my part, I will have to learn how to create some of the behind the scenes magic that Melany brought to our home and workplace.
In closing, I am sure Melany would have liked the chance to say, GOOD BYE to everyone she knew, so I will say it for her.... GOOD BYE my friends. I will miss you, and it has been my privilege to know you. Don’t cry too much for me. I left earlier than I hoped, but I have had a really great life... Melany.
I think she might have said something like that... Richard.
In place of flowers, please consider a donation to the BC Cancer Foundation or other cancer research group. It might help save you or someone you love someday.
The family is compiling photos and memories for a permanent online memorial...... If you have any stories or photos of Melany that you’d like to share, or if you’d like to check out that page when available, please email allison@nutri-nation.com
Melany Rose Schroeder (nee Palleson), the love of my life, mother of our children, business partner extraordinaire and my true best friend forever, passed away peacefully in her sleep at Eagle Ridge Hospital, Port Moody on the morning of December 10, 2020, one day short of our 47th anniversary. She was in the hospital for one week only. Thankfully, her final pain was short lived. Cancer was the Dark Villain in this story. Melany was born August 3, 1952 in New Westminster, BC.
Because a traditional funeral gathering is not an option at this time, I have pulled together some of the words I might have awkwardly tried to deliver as Melany’s Eulogy.
On her side of the family, Melany leaves behind her mother Shirley, brother Rob, his special friend Naomi and Rob’s son, Cody, his wife Anna and their son Elias, Rob’s daughter Courtney plus some aunts, uncles, nieces and cousins. Melany’s dad, Larry and her grandparents died some years ago.
On the Schroeder side of the family, Melany leaves our daughter Allison, her husband Ryan plus their children George, Jack and Samuel, .... our son Aaron and his wife Reagan and their daughter Charlie, ... our son Ben and his soon to be bride, Mojgan and their two fuzzy cats, ... and me.
I woke up December 11th morning (our 47th anniversary), and It finally hit me hard. Melany was not coming home again. Despite having great adult children, grandchildren, business activities and a few good friends, she was not going to be with me anymore. The words, ’til death do us part, just became real. Melany and I were almost like a single entity over our entire life together. We were more like a set, not individual pieces. We genuinely liked being together, whether at work or play. We teased and joked with each other all the time, just like best friends, which we definitely were.
If you knew Melany early in her life or in more recent times, let me tell you a little bit about her that you might not know. She and I both started our lives as two of those lucky kids who had good, kind, caring and honest parents. Having that strong start in life was like winning a lottery ticket. That’s how I see it, looking back.
I knew Melany since elementary school and from the neighborhood. I was one year older than her and it was not considered cool to pursue younger girls at school in those days, even one year younger. As a 13-year-old “businessman”, I used to sharpen Melany’s ice skates. I remember hoping that Melany would come by herself to pick up the skates that her mother had dropped off. Sometimes she did, and I liked those sweet moments. She once mentioned that she had marched in parades and knew how to twirl and catch a baton. She didn’t say it in a bragging way. Using my adult brain today, I think she was trying to catch my interest, but my 13-year-old brain wasn’t reading the signals. I always thought Melany was a real cutey through junior and senior high school, but we each had our own different groups of friends. As it happened, my girlfriends in high school were mostly blonde. I don’t know how it worked out that way. It was not intentional. Melany would always tease me about, “my blondes”, as she called them, when we crossed paths during my grade 11 and 12 years. Looking back, how dumb was I to miss those flashing light expressions of interest? The answer is, very dumb indeed. I used to see her around at school, parties and cruising at the local car-hop drive-ins during our high school years. Things didn’t start to heat up for us until May of 1970, after I returned from an interrupted motorcycle trip that was supposed to end up in South America. An engine failure brought me back home. That engine failure started a chain reaction of good fortune events for me. My unfocused life changed overnight. Within days of my return home to Canada, Melany and I bumped into each other at a local soul music dance club, The Groove Yard. I had never taken her there or anywhere else on an actual date. It was at that chance meeting where she invited me to take her to her high school grad (prom). Was it just chance? I wish I could ask her that question now. She was a friend and my occasional dance buddy, and I thought there might be a good after-grad party, so I said yes. I am not sure how she viewed that first date. For me, the first date was fun, but it delivered an outcome that I did not foresee. That first date gave us a solid re-start point to really get to know each other slowly over the next several months. What had I been missing for all those years that I viewed her only as a friend? As I got to know Melany, and she got to know me, I became increasingly amazed and ultimately overcome by what I was discovering. I fell totally and helplessly in love with her. I was only 19, but I knew this was going to be forever. I am not a guy who says that sort of thing out loud, but today seems like a good day to say it. We had more than a superficial teenage attraction. I loved absolutely every new thing I learned about Melany. She was genuine. She was kind, considerate, funny, great to be around, inspiring, sexy and very smart. She was the whole package. My princess also treated me like her prince, then and right up to the end. While my buddies at the time were enjoying the free love phenomena of the late 60s and early 70s, I was not interested. I had found the one true Love of My Life. I know she felt the same way. You can’t fake that sort of thing for very long, and definitely not for 50 years.
Our life together has been intertwined with our business activities since day one. That business collaboration started about 1971. I was a suit-and-tie wearing, Lincoln Continental driving, cosmetic sales entrepreneur and she was my #1 beauty advisor. We felt like Bonnie and Clyde, only with lipstick instead of guns. We sold cosmetics direct to consumers. I went door to door booking cosmetic parties and she did the party presentations and made the sales. I was a distributor of Koscot Kosmetics. They were an early type of network marketing company. I performed a high energy blackboard presentation at the distributor recruitment meetings and Melany did the beauty advisor recruitment parts of the program. We were a team. Melany was fearless and we motivated each other to keep doing better. She also supervised a small group of other beauty advisors on our team. That was her first management position.
We soon opened our first retail wig and cosmetic shops in Surrey, then New Westminster as three partners, including my mother. Among her other talents, Melany was also a skilled seamstress. She did a feature window in our shop offering that service. She made wedding and formal dresses to order. I worked part time behind the scenes in the business and kept my travelling welding supply salesman job until we started to make enough money to pay me something each month. Melany and I were both living with our parents at the time, so we didn’t need much. Later, after our wholesale wig business was bringing in good revenue, I secretly rented and furnished an apartment near the business and took Melany to look at “my” new apartment one afternoon. I had been plotting this maneuver for a couple of months. She was surprised, but even more surprised with my marriage proposal, including a Justice of the Peace courthouse appointment for the next day. The Marriage License cost was $7.50. I just found the old receipt. We were married and moved in together as husband and wife that evening, December 11, 1973. Melany got along great with my mother, before and after we got married. My dad loved Melany too. She became the new daughter he never had. My mom remained working with our wholesale wig and beauty products business until she retired at 80. In the latter years of my mom’s life, Melany took on much of the responsibility of helping my mom with her day-to-day needs. I can’t leave our kids out of this picture. Allison, Aaron and Ben also did a lot to support their Granny, right up to her final days. Our kids grew up in the business with us as each one was born. I must also give credit at this time to Melany for doing the lion’s share of raising our children. I was there as the dad figure, but she did most of the real work. One of my dad’s (Grampa Ben) greatest joys in his life, was when he helped us blast, burn and clear our forest acreage to build our first house. He had worked as a logger in younger years, and loved to show off his lumberjack skills to us amateurs. Melany didn’t mind getting dirty when needed. She was right there in the mud with her bib overalls and rubber boots during the whole build. We fell truckloads of large trees to sell.
There is not enough time and space to include all of the great in-between years and landmark moments in our lives leading up to present day. Those years were mostly sweet and rewarding. We had three great kids and had the chance to watch them grow up. What a gift that has been. Our little Mom and Pop wig and cosmetic business eventually evolved into two significant companies, Nutri-Nation Functional Foods Inc. and Bio-Care Laboratories Inc. plus an industrial property business. We had many product line evolutions through the years. Not everything we tried worked out. As Poor Richard’s Distributing Corp, we sold wigs, cosmetics and fashion jewelry to retailers and we had a separate company called The Silk Garden for a few years. They marketed artificial flowers and plants. Those businesses were sold off or closed along the way. Bio-Care was our first homerun hit. It in turn allowed us to fund and launch Nutri-Nation, which became a much bigger story. Work was fun and exciting for us most of the time. Melany was without fear when it came to considering new opportunities. She only said no to me if a proposal was weak on logic or too high in risk. We kept emotions out of those business decisions. Our life together was not all work. We usually added on vacation days to business trips. Our kids went to Disneyland almost every other year during their childhood. We had business in California and other states, and often stayed an extra week or so to be tourists. We did take some actual non-business vacations, usually by boat around the Gulf and San Juan Islands. Melany also took frequent friends and family vacations to Mexico and Hawaii without me. I didn’t care much for laying around the beach or pool getting a sunburn. For the last two years, we have also lived part time in Harrison Hot Springs. That has been much like a vacation for us too. We have had good fortune and accomplished a lot in our life together. Our three adult children have all grown into competent, kind and productive adults. That is our #1 accomplishment. We checked off that box some years ago. They each manage important parts of the family enterprise now. I see Melany in their words, thought processes and actions daily.
In recent times, Melany’s main role has been Chief Financial Officer. In reality, she has always done much more. She has been a true equal partner and can take equal credit for any business and personal success we have achieved. Not only was Melany the “mother” of many of our business projects, she was also a mother figure and mentor to some of our staff members and others outside of work.
Melany and I started to slow down our work commitments over the last two or three years. We both still love to work, but not all the time. Her intention was to have more Grandma time and less Boss time. She has cherished her 6 great years as Grandma, but was really looking forward to the end of Covid to jump deeper into that Grandma roll, hopefully for a long time to come. We thought there would be more time.
You will notice that I seem to have placed myself in almost every scene of this love story. I didn’t intend that when I started to write, but Melany’s story really is our story. I could not tell her story any other way. I wanted to share these little pieces of my best friend’s life with you. If you are reading this sad, yet happy story, you probably know and care about Melany and our family. I sincerely thank you for your connection. As Allison told our Team at work the afternoon of Melany’s passing, ... Don’t worry...The show must go on. For my part, I will have to learn how to create some of the behind the scenes magic that Melany brought to our home and workplace.
In closing, I am sure Melany would have liked the chance to say, GOOD BYE to everyone she knew, so I will say it for her.... GOOD BYE my friends. I will miss you, and it has been my privilege to know you. Don’t cry too much for me. I left earlier than I hoped, but I have had a really great life... Melany.
I think she might have said something like that... Richard.
In place of flowers, please consider a donation to the BC Cancer Foundation or other cancer research group. It might help save you or someone you love someday.
The family is compiling photos and memories for a permanent online memorial...... If you have any stories or photos of Melany that you’d like to share, or if you’d like to check out that page when available, please email allison@nutri-nation.com