Courtney speaks of her recent time in the garden. “The earth just keeps producing bio-mass!” she observes. “I take up this bunch of bio-mass,” her eloquent hands mime the act of pulling a clump of weeds from the ground and discarding it, “And get rid of it so that this other one can bloom more abundantly.” Courtney mimes her protection of the cultivated plant, then spreads her hands, a gesture of bafflement and wonder at the injustice and the futility, the mystery of imposing human desire on the majesty of creation.

My own gardens are blooming valiantly in the face of complete neglect. No cultivation, no new mulch. Nothing. I look out the window and marvel at the riot of peony and iris, catnip and meadow sage, mingled with the encroaching grass, the stinging nettle I’d been battling last year (now left to flourish), the noxious bishop’s weed gone rampant. Here, bio-mass has been left to its own devices.

I plug along from task to task and keep the bogey-man, grief, at bay. One Kleenex, strategically stuck in my pocket, gets me through my farewell Itinerarium at St. Andrew’s. But a casual trip to Shop-Rite leaves me on the brink. Samson’s favorite Salmon Entree is five cans for $2, but he will be my cat for only four more days. What to do? To avoid paralysis in the pet food aisle, I throw all five cans in the cart and move on, lump in throat. Around the corner, I can’t decide whether I need a quart or a half gallon of orange juice. The expiration date on the half gallon is 7/28, the day I leave for China. OK. I’m leaving in the time it will take this OJ to go bad. I put it in the cart.

In the safety of conversation with Laurie and Chris, I am able to say what I think and feel and know. I’m not afraid of the arriving; it’s the leaving that is terrifying.