Joshua Gallegos, a 14-year-old eighth-grade student at twin Falls Elementary School, passed away suddenly on Sunday, May 3.

Joshua’s mom, Jenny, described him as a jokester and a good kid with a distinct “Eddie Murphy-like” laugh, who loved French toast and video games and was “wise beyond his years.”

“He was just always a happy kid,” Jenny stated from her North Bend home.

His twin sister, Julia, said Josh was always making silly jokes — “He’d sit there waiting for you to laugh and you’d laugh at his face,” she said.

“You’d laugh at his laugh,” his mom agreed.

“The service took a long time,” she continued about the May 9 memorial at the middle school, “It was like a three-hour service. The kids just wanted to get up there and talk.”

Joshua was born with a congenital heart condition called Long QT syndrome, a heart arrhythmia that’s undetectable without an electrocardiogram (EKG), which most people won’t get until they reach a heart-attack prone age.

When Josh was 5 years old, he had a heart attack while he was getting ready for school. Jenny and his dad, Joey, thought he was just joking until he started going into convulsions. Jenny performed CPR until the paramedics came.

The doctors put him in a hypothermic state for nearly a week to protect his brain from the negative effects of the halted blood flow, but didn’t insert a defibrillator because he didn’t have enough body fat to place it anywhere other than in his stomach.

Jenny said from age 5 to 14, Josh was taking his medicine, visiting a doctor regularly and, ultimately, he was fine.

“He was just normal,” she said. “You just get used to it and you kind of forget about it.”

Josh died in his sleep while spending the night at his friend’s house. He woke up in the morning, went back to bed and was unresponsive when checked on.

“He wasn’t home and I feel really guilty that he wasn’t home… I’m glad he was where he was,” Jenny stated, saying his friend’s family loved him as much as his own.

Jenny Gallegos, Joshua’s mom, holds the seat cover that marked her son’s usual spot on the bus. A classmate wrote on the seat in memory of Joshua, who had a heart disorder and died May 3, at age 14. – Allyce Andrew / Staff Photo

Following Josh’s death, a student on Bus 10, his daily bus route, wrote, “This is where Josh always sat. R.I.P. Josh Gallegos,” on the bus seat cover of his token seat, to the right, all the way in the back of the bus.

Jenny said she assumed the school district’s department of transportation would patch the seat and said she told a small group at her house that she wanted that part of the seat cover. Later that day, one of Josh’s friends stopped by her house and handed her the entire cover.

“It was so weird because earlier I had said something about it and he hasn’t ridden the bus home all week and he just rode the bus home that day and the bus driver gave it to him.”

The bus driver, Sarah Johnson, said she kept the cover after fellow bus drivers recovered the seat and left it for her with a “sweet note.” She said she gave it to Josh’s friend after he offered to run it to Josh’s house.

“I’m deeply sorry for their loss… Joshua was a good kid,” Johnson stated over the phone, affirming that Josh sat in the same seat every day and she’s currently struggling to get students to sit in it again.

The family said they haven’t decided the best way to display the cover, but it’s a small source of comfort while they process their loss.

“It’s really weird, it’s really hard,” she mused. “I know that our family’s here, but I feel like there’s a constant missing link.”

“I still feel like he’s here,” his sister Julia said. “I feel like he’s on vacation and we’ll see him again. I guess we will see him again, it’s kind of true. It just feels like he’s still in this house.”

Joshua is survived by his father Joey, mom Jenny, his twin sister Julia and his older brother Jakob. To donate to his bereavement fund, visit: http://www.gofundme.com/tv6vqw.