A final wish fulfilled: 12-year-old Missouri boy creates legacy of love through Legos
By Krista Tatschl
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KANSAS CITY, Missouri (KMBC) — One look around the bedroom of 12-year-old Jace Zembsch, and you see the typical teen things: gaming systems, Star Wars and superhero posters. His favorite distractions, though, sit in kits and boxes waiting to be assembled: Legos.
Legos came in handy through the annoying, painful regimen of chemotherapy and endless hours spent in bed at Children’s Mercy Hospital.
Zembsch fought a type of cancer, Ewing’s sarcoma, for over a year. It is a rare, aggressive cancer that usually starts in bone or sometimes in the soft tissue around bones. It mainly affects children, teenagers and young adults, most often between ages 10-20.
The cancer eventually spread from his kidney to his lungs, brain and left jaw. His parents asked if he wanted to do another round of chemotherapy, and he chose not to continue the process that made him feel so ill.
Zembsch passed away three weeks ago, but not before tasking his parents with fulfilling a final wish: He wanted to give other children in the hospital what comforted him the most.
His mother, Brooklynn Zembsch, standing outside Children’s Mercy Hospital, recalled, “When he was here, they would come in and ask him, ‘What can we give you to make you feel better?’ He would ask for Legos and they’d say, ‘Well, we’ll go try to find some Legos.'”
Jace’s mom created an Amazon wish list filled with every type of Lego set and board game for which a kid could hope.
On Monday, the family delivered on Jace’s wish, with hundreds of donations pouring in. A sticker on most of the packages shows a picture of Jace. He is smiling, lying on his back in a pile of brightly colored fall leaves.
“We’re gonna do this every year on his birthday,” Brooklynn Zembsch said.
The donations included many of Jace’s favorites, such as a Lego set of the house from the Pixar Animation Studios movie “Up.”
“He liked the ‘Up’ house a lot … bunches of those in there,” she added.
Brooklynn Zembsch expressed the importance of the donations, saying, “We just wanted to make sure other kids could have those things that made Jace feel really good because we know how depressing it can be for kids to be here.”
She also shared how the initiative helps keep Jace’s memory alive.
“It helps remind us of him, too,” she said. “We want to always keep his name alive … Everything Jace went through, we wanted to always have a bigger purpose.”
The family is grateful for the support they have received.
“It just means so much to us,” Brooklynn Zembsch said.
Children’s Mercy often receives in-kind donations. The link to arrange a donation can be found here.
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