Carol Marie Reynolds

Carol Marie Koehler Reynolds

May 6, 1930 - October 20, 2025

Carol Marie Koehler Reynolds passed away peacefully in her sleep at home in Cody, WY, on October 20, 2025. She was 95 years young. Her parents emigrated from Austria in the 1920's through Ellis Island. She was a first generation American, born in Chicago in 1930, oldest of 5 siblings, mother to 5, grandmother to 10, great-grandmother to 21. She was a stay-at-home mom and later a working mom. A captain in the Civil Air Patrol in the 70s and 80s and also worked as an assistant in the Sheriff's office. She was a singer, musician, amateur photographer and loved to travel. She taught many local children to play piano when she lived up in the mountain community of Caliente, CA, where she and her husband Shelton retired in 1995. She was preceded in death by her husband, her sister, Charlotte, and her grandson, Gabriel. She will be missed and remains loved by many. May God bless her and welcome her to His Kingdom.

Jon Reynolds

Carol Marie Koehler Reynolds

Joined us 6 May 1930 and succumbed to heart failure 20 October 2025

O O say can you see before her? What was before? Shelton, a self-made husband and standardized father guided by the noble and great ones gone before her molding a new generation.

B Bits for herself, she held sometimes selfishly-survival? She nurtured dreams like rare flowers in a quiet garden. With a pinch of need to have purpose.

I I see that unfolding nurturing. She trying gently in everyday gestures that often went unseen yet were deeply felt.

T There were too many who forgot the vanishing of her dancing dream for an education. But she held a miracle, a reality, a gift she shared in praising His name with angelic voice and piano through spirit.

U Universally she was the most critical of women due to her yearning for perfection. Yet oddly enough she was Plainchant without Pretense. She was bashful giving not only to an applauding world, but expressed invisibility not in silence, but in a metaphorical riff that sought more than sound-something tasted, something known. That need for that taste in the ears of her heartlings: Michele, Denise (Kate), Debra, Desiree, and Jon circling their own lives stayed tethered to the purity of the taste.

A And yet just a mom. She gave us so much the world had to offer so we would have opportunities and choice. She wanted her dreams to touch ours. There were many failures and blaming herself and knowing she had done everything wrong. Ah, there was success-tentative, occasional, but hers, nonetheless. Some success was like shy wildflowers blooming when least expected.

R Rare still describes her because she, the most critical of all spell-checkers spells Obituary without the "Y." She spells it "ObituarQMB" Queen Mama Bear. And she was. She is still (no pun).

I love you and miss you so much. I am so looking forward to our hug of words.

Obit Thoughts Shared Between Mom and I.

Obituaries give us glimpses into something that might be true. Our perceptions create what is true for us.

Mom and I had 17 extra years that others are not blessed with. 17 extra years,

and yet too damn little. There will be so much shared as interpreted by those as they happened with Mom. We have all had entanglements with Mom. When we think we've experienced the same event with Mom the experience falls in the sometimes organized or disorganized pattern of our life experiences and in the retelling of those events they are nothing alike as if we didn't have the same mother at all. The DNA is there but each helix moves at its own unique individual. DNA isn't a copycat in the way a mimic might be. While the sequence itself is replicated, the way that DNA is expressed-which genes are turned on or off, when, and how-is deeply influenced by interactions with the environment, including relationships, stress, nutrition, and even emotional experiences.

For me there really isn't a one-size-fits-all obituary. So, I can imagine several Core Definitions of an Obituary.

There are Creative and Emotional Dimensions. For me there are coustic tributes: Using the persons/s name as a poetic framework So, we all may have different ideas of what to share. You may not understand my concept nor I yours. You may think we've missed the mark. But there is an important question here. What is the mark? Are we writing to share facts? Share sorrow? Making sure everyone has it right according to our opinion? Is it to make sure a lie is truthed? Is it so our friends know how great our mom is? Is it a chance to turn inwards and reflect? A chance to turn outward to prove something? Is it a message to the world, to ourselves? Is it so Mom pastes it in her celestial journal? We actually hit the mark by being an empty shell that is overstuffed with emotion while praying for balance when our brains and spirits struggle through our most divine tangent and light begins to form through our metaphysical matrix --a grid of truths beyond the physical.

Kate Reynolds Piersanti