Selma Esther Ryan, 96, passed away on April 14, and was one of five residents who had contracted the coronavirus while living in an assisted living home in Austin Texas, Her daughter, Vicki Spencer, told American TV station KXAN.
"Over the next five days I watched through the window as she got sicker and sicker,” Spencer said, adding that it was hard not being able to be with her mother to celebrate her birthday, which fell just three days before her death.
"Our family gathered outside her window, but it was obvious that something terrible had happened to her," Spencer said.
According to the Miami Herald, Ryan's obituary states that her middle name is the same as first name of her sister, Esther, who was just five years old when she passed away in 1918, as one of 50 million to succumb to the Spanish Influenza.