MILWAUKEE — Pam Gustafson lost her sister to COVID-19 in May 2021 and turned her thoughts of sorrow and anger into a poem.

“This is the risk you are taking if you chose not to get vaccinated and we need their vaccinations for our heard immunity. So, I wrote this poem to show people what it was like,” said Gustafson, a retired Milwaukee educator.

“At the time of her death, I went through a period where I was angry because there were so many people who chose not to vaccinate,” said Gustafson.

Gustafson wrote “Dying From COVID Is Not Pretty” just weeks after her sister died. She hopes this poem will be a reminder of how horrible the disease can be for people and the significance of getting vaccinated.

“My sister could possibly still be alive if she had that third vaccine,” Gustafson said.

Her sister, Mary Beth Nolan, was 59-years-old when she died of COVID-19. Gustafson said her sister was fully vaccinated but had an autoimmune disorder.

Read her entire poem below.

Dying From COVID Is Not Pretty

Dying from COVID is not gentle death
It is a brutal way to die, gasping for breath
I watched my baby sister die this way
She begged for a ventilator every day
She knew a ventilator signaled the end
But her fear and anxiety needed to mend
I saw the fear in her eyes and tried to send
Messages of love to my sister, my friend
Her long hair was matted against her face
Her teeth were black with lots of dried gunk
She had to communicate by trying to write
Refused to move her mask aware of her plight
Imagine gasping for air just to talk
So much fatigue you can’t walk
Like choking on a piece of food blocking air
Or drowning your gasping lungs in despair
And living for weeks on tubes alone
What your body used to do on its own
A catheter to pee, you can’t walk to the can
Tired you can’t lift your body for a bedpan
A tube that brings you some nourishment
Your body can’t coordinate breath and eating
Now your lungs are deflated balloons pleading
For the air they were used too and needing
Two garden hoses sutured to your neck
To remove carbon dioxide waste
To replenish oxygen organs to baste
You can’t move there is no food to taste
Imagine writing a note to your sister
This is the last time you will see me
Even though it hadn’t crossed my mind
The site of her struggle was so unkind
She was right it was the last time
But at that point I still had some hope
But my sister just could not cope
Her lungs functioning at 0 percent
Doctors considered double lung transplant
But my sister wanted to end the struggle
She was constantly thinking I just can’t
I have been short of air for a long month
And on that same note she wrote to me
Was a note to the people who gave her care
“Can you put me under? Insert the tube?”
She was suffering wanted to die I conclude
For death was her only choice to end her pain
Then her kidneys shut down her heart waned
They brought her back twice but it was her will
To escape her body the body the COVID killed
Her death certificate arrived today
It said “Multiorgan failure due to sepsis”
And added “Sepsis due to Covid 19”
Covid is deadly I hope now you have seen
So please do not risk “Normal” to soon
To the scientists we must stay attuned
And eventually we will figure out
How to live with COVID, or stomp it out