Six-year-old Jase Nelson and his mom, Michelle, sat down together this week to look at a class picture from kindergarten last year. Jase wanted to remember one classmate in particular.
“I played with her last year,” the now-first grader at Marshall’s Park Side Elementary School said. “At recess, she will want to play tag or she would want to play with me. She was a little shy. She would like to take pictures.”
It was a bittersweet memory that left Jase crying, and Michelle trying to help comfort her child through her own grief.
“She had lots of friends,” Jase said. “She would be nice.”
Last Sunday, Jase’s kindergarten classmate — a little girl, 6 years old like him — died from complications of COVID-19.
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