<div><strong>Cackles for Kerry.</strong>
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<div>Hello, I am Kerry’s nephew, Scott, and I’m asking on behalf of her family for financial support in the form of donations (or, if you could, the sharing of this page!) to help cover recent end-of-life care expenses 
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<div>and the costs of hosting a celebration of her life.
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<div>If it’s not clear yet, Kerry is no longer with us. After 10 years of fighting cancer and a what felt like a BOGO deal of other health issues, she succumbed to her ailments and passed away on August, 6 2024. She leaves behind a large family of 4 children, 6 grandchildren, a husband, three sisters, a brother, and countless friends.
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<div>Unfortunately, the family is struggling with her life insurance and spending all of their time trying to navigate that on top of the nightmare of losing their mother at such a young age.
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<div>That’s three paragraphs of sad, which is weird to write, if you know Kerry. For those who come across this page and do not, you may see comments below about how “strong” and “brave” and “determined” Kerry was. Not to say it’s untrue. She was those things! But that focuses on the last ten years and ignores the truest and most compelling essence of Kerry and her presence on this earth for just over 53 years.
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<div><strong>Kerry was f@cking hilarious.</strong>
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<div>In fact, the only thing Kerry ever did that didn’t make me laugh was die.
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<div>Maybe it was developed as a coping mechanism for being the youngest of 5 siblings who are all tough as nails, honed over years of struggles and hardships due to circumstances out of her control. Who knows? Who cares? She was just funny. Where most try to face life’s obstacles with grace, Kerry taught me it was better to throw those obstacles off balance with wit.
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<div>Here are a few other ways Kerry made me laugh, teaching me how to better live in the process.
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<div>While helping my older cousin get over an ex, she once rhymed the words “Katrina” and “Weiner” - I was twelve at the time and to me this was peak comedy. Just straight Shakespearean levels of poetry to my adolescent ears.
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<div><strong>I had never known you could mend a broken heart with humor until Kerry made me laugh.</strong>
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<div>At my high school graduation party on our back deck, my mother was sitting in a chair that slowly started to lose its structural integrity. As she started to fall backward in what felt like slow-motion, while we panicked, Kerry didn’t miss a beat and shouted “TIMBERRRR.”
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<div>I never realized how much great timing can turn a potential disaster into a story for the ages until Kerry made me laugh.
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<div>One time she was staying with me at a hotel for a state championship swim meet and she snored so much during a nap I tried to sleep in the bathtub to get some rest. When she woke up to use the bathroom she found me and got so startled she told me if I didn’t take the bed and give her the bathtub, she’d drown me in it. I set a state record that evening thanks to her.
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<div>I didn’t know that you could show love and tenderness and care through threats of mortal harm until Kerry made me laugh.
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<div>When her mother, and my grandmother died, right around the time Kerry got sick, one of the last times we really spent time together, she had the brilliant idea to go into her bathroom, take her dentures, and have a photo shoot with them.
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<div>I never knew that the best part of grief was the laughter that, if even momentarily, melts it away, allowing us to feel whole again in between bouts of emptiness, until, through tears, with ill-fitting dentures lodged in her mouth, Kerry made me laugh.
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<div>And so, oddly enough, one of the last times I saw Kerry, in showing me how to deal with her mother’s death, she was teaching me how to process her own. Through laughter. I know that’s something her family wants desperately to get back to, laughing. As, to the surprise of no one, the apples didn’t fall far from the tree. Each and every one of them possessed the same essence to bring levity to any situation when others are hurting, but this time, it’s them in need to levity.
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<div><strong>With your support, her family will be able to:</strong>
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<div>Afford the kind of service Kerry deserves, full of inappropriate jokes, laughter at inopportune times, and let’s be real, knowing this family, probably a fight or two that end in, yep, you guessed it, laughter.
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<div>Get closer to being financially whole after months and months spent on and in hotels, and at hospitals talking to doctors, who are, very famously, not very funny.
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<div>Rest, recover, and recuperate while they get back on their feet, instead of dealing with unhelpful insurance companies, who are not just unfunny, but paid to be outright jerks.
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<div>I suppose it’s best to end this post with an explainer on the title. It’s alliterative, and a bit gross, but it’s reflective of the thing I will always remember most about Kerry. Her laugh. I swear to god the first time I thought she was dying was the first time I heard her laugh. It was violently loud, unapologetically piercing, and reminiscent of a harbor seal on helium. But it was also joyous, comforting, and once she got going, shared by everyone around her. And hopefully, with time, we can begin to share it again.
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<div>Thank you for any and all support you can give, even if it’s a funny story of your own below, about Kerry, or any other “Kerry’s” you’ve had in your life. They’re rare, but all share the same gift, the ability to laugh in hard times, so let’s pass some of that on.
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Anonymous

Robert Timberlake

Susan Craig

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Debbie Adkins

tim major

Tracy Johnston

Lindsey Saunders

Wayne Elsey

Rhonda Tunney

Curtis Donelson

Beth Shalap

Mathieu Lefebvre

Sean Smith

Heather Greene

Jolie Browder

Keegan Sweetser

Robin Davis

Support Kerry's Family in Their Time of Need

Support Kerry's Family in Their Time of Need

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