Roll Call Tribute

Carie Rivers Garrett

May 28, 1965 ~ December 1, 2022

We bid farewell to our dear Carie on Thursday, December 1.

Wife, mother, yogi, teacher’s aide, percussionist, artist, dancer, bonne vivante, spiritualist, friend, companion, partner and celebrant. In each and every role, she filled the moments of her life with beauty, grace, color and spirit. She made each day feel special.

Simply reciting the facts of her life serves as the merest outline to such an extraordinary existence.

Carie was born in Temple, Texas, and her family moved to College Station when she was two. Carie attended A&M Consolidated High School where she marched in the band and danced on the drill team.

After receiving a degree from Texas A&M University, she worked at Ocean Drilling Program where she was able to spend one leg on the ship working in the core lab as the research vessel drilled for sediment cores on the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean near Guam.

Carie and Bill married in 1990. Dillon came along in 1993 and Sydney in 1997 (both births were completely natural, without the assistance of any medicines, she would proudly proclaim).

Along the way, Carie loved to dance, participated in musical theater, expressed herself artistically and worked out. We learned not to be surprised whenever Carie would break out in some expressive dance moves in the kitchen.

Carie took up hand drumming at the fortuitous time when the music group at St Francis Church needed just a bit of beat and rhythm. At St Francis Episcopal Church, from time to time she was invited to step up to the pulpit and deliver a sermon, before heading back to the music circle and continuing the rhythm. She took up guitar and learned to strum out some of the tunes that provided a soundtrack to many of our days.

Her energy and passion took her in so many directions. As an aerobics instructor, she devised exciting new step routines before each class. One – two – three – four – five – six – seven – eight! She wrote her routines on many different colors of Post-It notes, and we spent many a year chasing these colorful pages throughout the house.

Carie stayed home with the kids while they were young. She taught them to be kind and to be patient, and she spent many days immersed in their creative games and make-believes. She was the best mother that two kids could hope for.

After many years of leading fitness classes, she happened upon a yoga practice that altered and informed many of the years of her life.

Peace, stillness, quiet, and sharing: these basic tenets of Carie’s spirit drove her to learn more and practice more deeply. Carie started travelling to attend yoga conferences, where she assisted and then eventually lead the yoga practice. Her spiritual mecca became her yearly week-long trips to Feathered Pipe Ranch in Montana to assist her yoga teacher, to spend time with dear friends and to walk in grace through the pristine countryside.

During one trip, Carie and a friend were having breakfast in a rustic café when someone came in carrying a chicken. The chicken was squawking, pecking, and raising a ruckus. Carie and her friend decided unanimously that they were glad that it was not their chicken. Which became Carie’s mantra:

Not my chicken.

In other words, don’t worry about matters that do not belong to you.

Not my chicken.

When Carie turned our garage into a yoga studio, it became a physical representation of so many aspects of her spirit. The paint, the floor, the lighting, the colors, the décor, the aroma, the sounds, all aspects which were chosen uniquely and intentionally by Carie. And she filled the porch posts and rafters with painted images, mottos, characters and stencils, turning the plain wood into a mural for herself and her students.

To Carie, if two colors is good, then seven colors is sublime. Carie didn’t paint objects. She embellished them.

And she created artistically.

Colors and shapes. Many media: oil, water, pencils, glitter pens.

Somewhere along the way, Carie started as a teacher’s aide up at St Thomas ELC. Each day as she left for work, I reminded her to “Bring the magic.” Carie’s quiet calm, her steady eye, and her firm constancy helped to fill the chaotic environment of a preschool classroom or playground with that extraordinary sense of possible tranquility and steady intent.

No mention of Carie is complete without recounting her love of musical theater. Carie lived for the night that the Tony awards was on TV. This brief exposure to the year’s Broadway shows would provide her with a depth of knowledge that she never forgot. Carie had a small role in a local production of The Music Man some years ago, and she likely could have sung any, and every, part. Carie knew by heart all the lyrics to Hamilton well before we saw the show. And Carie knew every lyric and line in Grease, having seen the movie innumerable times.

Carie thought that every animal was cute. She captured and released flies and wasps that had gotten into the house, and shrieked with incomparable delight on the morning when we visited a friend’s baby goats.

Carie, in the last few, difficult months, focused on the lifeboat parable.

The story goes that a man in a flood declines an evacuation by car, lifeboat or helicopter, saying that God will provide for him. After meeting his maker, he is told that it was God who had sent the means of evacuation.

As Carie’s health declined and doctor visits became more serious, Carie insisted every obstacle before her, a new treatment or a scary medication, was her lifeboat. She repeated to us all, so many times “I am getting in that boat!”

We bid farewell to our dear Carie on a gentle Thursday evening. She was surrounded by family, supported by loved ones, in a room she had painted, in décor she had curated, wearing a shirt she had tie-dyed, listening to the playlist she had created, in a space, both figuratively and literally, that was so identifiably her.

Join us in honoring, remembering, and celebrating Carie by wearing brightly colored clothes to the ceremonies; by first practicing quiet listening before talking; and by considering the beauty, the grace, the splendor of stillness. A visitation will occur on Friday, followed by a church service on Saturday.

Carie is survived by her husband, Bill of College Station, Texas; son, Dillon of Brooklyn, New York ; daughter, Sydney currently in Houston, Texas; and her mother, Betty Davis, in Bryan, Texas.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to:
Feathered Pipe Ranch, where Carie practiced, learned, taught, and loved:
https://featheredpipe.com/donate/?q=11 

Or

St Thomas ELC, where Dillon and Sydney attended, and where Carie shared her magic and wisdom for many years as a teacher’s aide:
https://www.stthomaselc.org/donate-1 

A tribute will be held at Callaway Jones Funeral Home from 5:00 to 7:00 on Friday, December 9.

Funeral services at North Bryan New Birth Baptist Church Saturday, December 10 at noon. 4615 Bluejay Lane, Bryan Texas.

Wear your brightest colors!