Farewell to Bill

Those who know us well remember that we had a sad duty to carry out on this trip. In those morbid talks folks our age find themselves having late at night, our friend Bill had often expressed the wish that when he died his ashes would be scattered in the Majorelle Gardens in Marakesh. Bill loved Morocco, and in fact had been talking about coming along with us on the Moroccan leg of this journey. Then, his sudden and bewildering death in a traffic accident.

We did not have any idea what the garden was like, and were shocked to find it a highly organized botanical garden, with the plants labeled in French, Latin, and Arabic, and guards along every path. So we had to forgo any ceremony, and give the poor guy a toss into the bushes when we discovered we were alone. A visitor sometime before us had carved this graffiti into a cactus when he, too, had found a moment alone. "This is the last time I will see Marakesh".