I was leaving L.A. and Nancy Leff came to my yard sale. She defended me when my aunt criticized my selling family silver. She cheered me when I traded everything for Tucson in July. Yesterday, she popped into my mind, smiling and waving a bouquet of happy memories. Her forty-second birthday party at a posh Encino restaurant. Her fabulous LA apartment with living room fireplace and kitchen dinette. Her love of comedy and passion for helping people. A Google search led to her obituary in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Two days gone.

Amazing to think our separate journeys had led us both to Pennsylvania. Sad to think I’d missed my chance to drive across the state and see her perform at Hambones Cabaret in Lawrenceville before it closed in 2020. Humbled to think she may have touched me on her way to forever. And with her passing, the sixties seem a bit more out of reach, closer to my parents’ and grandparents’ decades.

My search also led me to her article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, titled, “Bittersweet Memories of RFK, Forty years gone,” chronicling a brief encounter with a childhood hero.

“I live back in my Burgh hometown now and holding Robert Kennedy's hand is still one of the highlights of my life,” she wrote. “I was an idealistic student, even too young to vote for him, and he touched my heart to a depth no political figure has come anywhere near and probably never will again in this life. Today we need his spirit more than ever.”