Maureen Tamam

38 years ago, as teaching assistant of a Molecular Genetics course at McGill, on my first meeting with students, Maureen Quinn stood out… We made an agreement that affected more than we could have ever guessed. You got me to the Quebec Winter Carnival, skiing at Mont Tremblant, etc. We seized opportunities, not knowing we had so little time. I was soon to lose my student visa after another brain operation. That autumn, we had a week together in Halifax and Nova Scotia. A year later your cancer had returned; you wanted to travel, but you ran out of time. 36 years ago, you left us to live our lives inspired by your life force.

A few months ago, your ashes were discovered… and, this sunny windy Sunday, your niece Lauren and I scattered some around the wild hill top I call Rüzgar Tepe: next to a young juniper, under a wild almond, around some Globularia orientalis … I had never looked quite this carefully at the way the land flows, the views (eastwards to the as yet unscathed landscape, south and westwards to the high speed railway viaduct, due to reach 90m above our land) the ground cover: a rock-seat, some tiny wild violets Viola parvula/kitaibeliana near the highest fence – that I would otherwise never have noticed.

Thanks for this “prod-jab-poke” (dürttün beni!)… Now this part of your journey has reached its destination, we will be together more often.