Pretty soon, I’m going to lose my friend, Nancy.

She has brain cancer. At age 56. The nurses have increased her morphine and family members are planning the funeral.

That’s why I drove to Florida last weekend. To see Nancy one more time, and say goodbye. I had no idea if she’d recognize me, or even be conscious. But I had to try.

She’s in a hospice in Pinellas Park, a suburb of St. Petersburg. I know the place well. My mother-in-law died there. I once wrote a newspaper story about one of its residents, a terminally ill two-year-old boy. It’s the hospice where Terri Schiavo lived -- and died.

And now Nancy is there, in room 44, her bed facing the window and a bougainvillea blooming outside.

“You should take a walk around the grounds,” said her brother, Tim. “It’s beautiful.”

Tim lives in Maine, but he’s been there, by Nancy’s side, for weeks. He spoon feeds her pudding and pops CDs of soothing music into the boom box. When she moans, he asks if she’s in pain. He puts the phone to her ear so she can hear her sister Martha’s voice.

When I arrived Saturday afternoon, Nancy looked asleep. Then her sky blue eyes opened and she looked at me. Stared at me, really. I sat in the chair next to her bed and reached for her hand. Two bracelets hung on her wrist, each with tiny embossed charms picturing the Virgin Mary, Pope Benedict, various saints. Nancy converted to Catholicism four years ago, about the time I moved away and we lost touch.

Nancy’s bald skull bore the wounds of repeated surgeries. Her face was expressionless, the mouth a horizontal line. She can’t smile anymore, Tim told me.

But it was obvious she recognized me, and as the afternoon wore on and other visitors came and went, it was obvious that she listened keenly to conversations going on around her. Ever curious, ever engaged: That’s Nancy.

She’s a citizen of the world, born in Paris, raised -- along with Tim and Martha -- in Ethiopia. She went to high school in London. She married a long-distance trucker and traveled all over with him. She has friends on several continents.

As she drifted in and out, I babbled about whatever memories I could dredge up: the time we went canoeing on Tampa Bay and got lost; the crazy “Oracle Evening,” when we predicted our futures with tarot cards and runes; marathon bread-baking sessions in her kitchen; jaunts to ethnic restaurants.

She mumbled responses, but I couldn’t understand.

That night, I slept at Nancy’s empty house. It looked the same, except for a wheelchair ramp by the front door. Her black cat, Rat, rubbed against my legs, starved for attention. As I fumbled for a light switch, I saw the clutter, even in the dark. Nancy is a pack rat, always has been.

The next day, I visited her once more before leaving town.

“I love you,” I told her.

Her mouth moved, trying to say something. I leaned in close.

“I love you, too,” she said. The words, that time, were crystal clear.

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