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DESPERATION HAS NO BEDTIME, and that’s how Jennifer Simpson ends up still awake on July 20, two hours past when she wanted to be asleep.
It’s almost 11 p.m., and Simpson is well into her fourth week of sheer financial panic trying to pay for her grandfather’s funeral. Jerry Roderick Sr., 73, had died in late June, and as Simpson scrolls on her phone, his body is still sitting in a backroom at a chilly funeral home in Houston.
Jennifer is a 26-year-old Texas high school English teacher, and by mid-July, she and her aunt Tara have tried everything to be able to pay the $18,000 they need to bury Jerry. Simpson has had bake sales, yard sales and plate sales, where they sell chicken or barbecue to construction crews looking for a $5 lunch.
They’re on their second GoFundMe trying to rally $7 or $11 or $14 from anybody and everybody they can. Lately, Jennifer and Tara have made signs and started walking up and down busy intersections hoping people will put down their windows with a dollar or two.
It’s not working. They’re at around $5,000, and the painful reality is hitting home: They aren’t going to be able to bake enough brownies to bury Grandpa Jerry.
So Mitchell finds herself tossing and turning in bed, head spinning about trying to get her grandfather in the ground. She normally crashes at 8:30 or 9 at night, then wakes up at 4:30 a.m. for the day, even when school is out. But lately, she sleeps when she can, and even then she feels like she has barbed wire in her stomach.
For two hours on this night, she tries to sleep but keeps pulling out her phone. By 10:40 p.m., Simpson is typing a…
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Source : espn
