SOUTH BEND — Family and friends are concentrating on memories of smiles and laughter, as questions remain over what caused a South Bend girl's sudden death. Mercedes Lewis, 11, died Tuesday morning at Memorial Hospital after being admitted with flu-like symptoms.

Health officials say they should know for sure within the next 48 hours whether the Clay Intermediate School sixth grader had the H1N1 virus and whether it was, in fact, the flu that caused her death.

Meanwhile, school administrators say they're taking precautionary steps recommended by the Centers For Disease Control to help stop the spread of the flu. Crews are deep-cleaning the building and making sure every classroom has hand sanitizer.

Beyond that, school and local health department officials are releasing little other information, citing privacy laws.

"Certainly, this is a tragedy, and we want to handle it appropriately," said South Bend Community School Corporation Superintendent James Kapsa.

Tuesday evening, neither local or state health officials would confirm that Lewis' case was connected to the H1N1 virus, saying only that further tests were necessary. A St. Joseph County Health Department spokesperson did say that the department is aware of some H1N1 flu cases in St. Joseph County, but that numbers are not unusually high.

Memorial Hospital spokesperson Diane Stover said the hospital is not taking any additional precautions, but are following every day procedures.

Meanwhile, friends and family are struggling to understand Lewis' sudden death. They say "happy" memories of a loving child are helping them cope, and they are remembering her simply as a "wonderful child and perfect daughter."

"Every day was a memory," said Mercedes' father Javon Lewis. "Every day. She loved to play. She loved family. She was a great daughter."

Lewis called every moment of the last 11 years "a gift," and said memories of his daughter remained as vivid as ever. Moments of shared smiles at home and special connections at church became so much more important Tuesday.

"She just loved to sing. She was real interested in music. She probably picked that up from me playing music, because I'm over with the choir," Lewis said, referring to his post as choir director at South Bend's Macedonia Baptist Church.

"We sung a lot together. That was a connection for us," he said, mustering a smile.

The connections don't stop there.

As rain pelted the pavement outside Clay Intermediate Center Tuesday afternoon, tears flowed inside.

"Mercedes was my best friend," said Alexis Michalski, also a sixth grader at Clay. "She helped everybody that needed to be helped."

Now, Michalski said she's joining family and other close friends in struggling to understand how it all could have happened so quickly.

"My friends said they seen her on Saturday, and she wasn't sick at all," said Michalski.

"All we know is that she got sick," said Mercedes' aunt Cassandra Lewis. "We're still waiting on results. So we don't know what happened with her."

Now, both family and friends are charged with the tough task of moving on. Both say they are leaning on each other and their faith for support.

"God is the head of this family, and we are a very strong family," said Cassandra Lewis.

"Family has always been there. It means the world to me to know that they're still here, but they've always been here," said Javon Lewis, surrounded by more than a dozen relatives at his home.

That support will continue, say dozens of Mercedes' loved ones, because that's the way she would have wanted it.

"She loved to make people laugh. She didn't like to see people sad," said Cassandra Lewis. "She was loved greatly by not only me, but her uncles, her grandparents. She was really loved by everyone."