Learning it had to come down wasn’t easy for them. But they accepted that nature had its way.

“Somebody looked inside and it was super empty,” said Somi Toyota. “And it could fall down on someone,” continued her classmate, Graham Ash.

Recently, they’ve focused on saying goodbye.

They hugged the tree and thanked it. They hung pouches with sage and handwritten wishes, per a Native American tradition. “I wish burr oak had a coat,” Lillian Salin wrote on hers.

They wrote a song to the tune of the popular “Let It Go” from the movie “Frozen.” It ends with them throwing a kiss to the tree.

Once it’s gone, they’ll place a cemetery rock they made by setting acorns, leaves and twigs from the tree into concrete around the inscription, “Dearly Beloved, Here Lies Bur Oak.”

“We’ll put it on the stump so everyone knows this is where our great tree once grew,” said Carson McMillan. The idea came to him because there’s a cemetery in his neighborhood.