My friend Nancy died today.

Nancy was a fixture at the City of Albany. She worked for the City for 15 years and before that she worked for one of the local engineering firms. A single mom, she raised her two kids and fought to give them all she could.

I think her official title was Engineering Associate, but basically she was the City’s librarian. She was in charge of our huge inventory of old drawings and maps. She knew where everything was, what it was called in 1950 and who designed it. One of her duties was assisting me in plan review. She would get all the paper work ready and do a pre-review, picking up obvious errors and omissions. Then I would review the plans.

We would talk back and forth as I went through each plan. I always had a comment about them that would make her laugh.

She knew everyone in the City. Because she worked with one of the largest and oldest engineering firms for so long, she knew the history of Albany as well. When I hired on almost three years ago, she took me under her wing. She introduced me to everyone who came by to see her and you can’t imagine how many would come by each day. Like I said, she was a fixture at the City. You could not come by the Engineering office without saying hello to Nancy.

I can’t tell you what a wonderful person she was. Full of life. Full of opinions. Full of joy.

There is a section in our local paper called the “Squawk Box”. It is a column of complaints and praise about anything and everything. I would read them at her desk every morning to see if the Engineering Department was in any of them and we would laugh and moan, as the case would be.

She had a tumor on her back and had an operation to remove it three years ago. The operation did not go very well and she suffered nerve damage that limited her mobility. She had to use a cane. Not only that, but she got a very bad infection and it took a long time to heal.

Just recently, the tumor had come back. She was in extreme pain and finally decided to have another surgery.

The surgery went well. I went to the hospital to see her three days after the surgery. We talked about work and people who had come in and just general stuff that we would talk about at work. It was a nice 15 minutes or so.

A few days later something happened. Later we learned she suffered from Sepsis that caused her breathing to become problematic and made her blood pressure drop. They rushed her to ICU.

I got the call two Mondays ago.

She looked terrible. She was on full life support and was heavily sedated. I prayed for her that day and most of the days the rest of that week. I would see her in the morning and in the evening on my way home from work. Sometimes I would drop by at lunch.

Each day she looked like she was getting better.

Last week she started squeezing hands when you asked her. By Wednesday she was off the respirator for short periods of time.

I saw her Thursday and she was on the respirator and asleep but her daughter told me that she had been awake earlier and was communicating.

Friday morning she saw me. It was so good to see her awake. She tried to wave and she smiled at me. I spent 15 minutes or so holding her hand telling her how happy I was to see her awake. Her daughter was there and she told me that the doctors thought she had a few small strokes as well. I told Nancy that she scared us to death and that she better get well.

I saw her Friday night and she was getting her teeth cleaned and her hair washed.

About 30 minutes ago I got a call that she passed away around 11am today.

Apparently she started going downhill Friday night and all day Saturday. Her back wound hemorrhaged and she had a lot of fluid on her lungs. Finally, they decided to remove her from life support and as it appeared everything was beginning to shut down.

She died surrounded by her kids and a few close friends.

I am going to miss Nancy more than you can imagine.

I would complain to her, she would encourage me. I would tell her about my family, she would tell me about hers. We would laugh at the absurdity of the City and shake our heads in disbelief.

She was my friend and I can’t believe she is gone.