CHRISTINE FREITER BUTTERFIELD

1974-2021

Christine Freiter Butterfield died peacefully in her sleep on October 17. She was 47 years old. She grew up in Houston where she attended Kingwood High School.

She graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio, and has lived in Austin for the past 25 years.

The most important thing to know about Christy is that she lived to see her only daughter grow up. Dylan was just 2 years old when doctors told Christy and Matt that she had a malignant brain tumor with not much hope for survival. Whether on account of love or luck or stubbornness, Christy lived for almost 14 more years. She was there to witness Dylan learning how to read, to ski, to ride horses, to drive, and to make the kind of lifelong friends who now surround and lift her up in times of joy and pain.

The miracle is not just that Christy survived cancer for so long. It’s that she did so smiling and laughing and dancing and singing her way throughout it all. Christy refused to be defined by the threat of illness. She insisted that everyone around her stay positive as well. She wanted us to focus not only on the blessings in her life but also in our own. Life is for the living, she made us all believe.

Who was Christy as a mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, and neighbor? She was exuberant, loyal, generous, hilarious, and always, always kind. She was the first to host a party and the last to leave one. She loved unjudgmental people who could laugh at themselves and the world. If you found yourself in Christy’s orbit, she treated you like a member of her inner circle. Nobody was a stranger, everyone was invited.

Christy was a musician.

She was a nerd. She was a knock-out. She was a walking one-woman show. She was as scattered as she was fundamentally reliable. She was as fabulous as she was unpretentious. She was the source of so much joy and silliness in all of her friends’ lives. And she was loved to her core by Matt and Dylan, her parents Miriam and Ed Freiter and her brother Erik, and by her mother and father-in-law Barbara and Bob Butterfield.

We take comfort in the knowledge that Christy was as adored as much as she adored life. And that she is everywhere still—in laughter and song and spirit, in the goodness and beauty of Dylan, and in the warm and ridiculous memories of everyone who goes on loving her.

A Celebration of Life will be held at the Gateway Community Church Campus on November 14 at 2pm.

For more information,

Visit Christy’s Site: https:// www.caringbridge.org/visit/ christybutterfield

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