BOSTON -- The family of a 12-year-old boy who died this winter from the seasonal flu is reaching out to the family of the woman who became the state's first confirmed H1N1 influenza fatality this week.

Hunter Pope, 12, a seventh-grader at Boston Latin Academy, died of the seasonal flu this winter.

"What I feel is huge loss. Hunter's absence is enormous," the boy's mother, Tess Pope, said.

The Popes have renamed their son's room the Memory Room.

"I can just go in there for one or two seconds," the boy's father, Ken Pope, said.

Tess Pope said her son's death was sudden.

"There was 40 minutes when it (went from) he is a kid with flu to 40 doctors around a table," she said.

The Pope family said they are trying to stay calm amid renewed H1N1 influenza, or swine flu, concerns after a 30-year-old woman from Boston died of the virus.

"I'm not going to live in fear of that. The odds of lightning striking twice," Ken Pope said.

The Popes have three other children. Hunter's twin, Molly, has been especially grief-stricken and has written music about her brother. The family said Molly's 13th birthday in May was painful.

"Part of her just doesn't want to go on without him," Tess Pope said.

The Popes said the doctors did everything they could to save their son.

"They opened his heart, tried to make it get beating. We were in the room the whole time," Tess Pope said.

Immediately after Pope's death, the Boston Public Health Commission said there is no evidence that the boy had serious health conditions no comma or was suffering from another infection that would heighten his risk.