Nina Hartman, a hospice patient, rests at her Lawrence residence.

In a modern home in west Lawrence, Nina Hartman finally has time to think.

“I arise in the morning, torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world – this makes it hard to plan the day,” Hartman says, quoting E.B. White with a laugh.

After a lifetime spanning eight decades and a career in advertising and training that’s taken her from New York to San Francisco, Hartman – diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer a year and a half ago – receives care from a visiting nurse with Hospice Care in Douglas County.

“There’s no point to subjecting myself to any kind of treatment that might have, well, some unpleasant side effects,” Hartman says. “In choosing to go this route, I’m just opting to feel as well as I possibly can.”

Hartman said her favorite time of day is her “happy hour.”

“I have a glass of wine each evening before I have dinner,” she says. That’s when she takes the time to visit with her daughter, Tony Wills, and discuss their days. “Well, her day, mostly. Mine’s pretty cut-and-dried.”

Hartman says she spends three to four hours each day re-reading favorite novels – Dick Francis is often at the top of the stack – and researching questions of spirituality, addressing “one’s need to find some answers as one gets to the end of one’s life,” she says.

“I think of myself as a secular person,” says Hartman, who celebrated her 86th birthday on May 12. “But if you were to ask me now what is my religion, I would probably say ‘kindness,’ because I think that compassion and kindness toward one’s fellow man, that’s the most important issue that we face in our world, is just being kind to one another.”