To the chipper

In an unforgettable scene from the 1987 movie Fargo, a character is discovered running the body of his partner in crime through a woodchipper.

I recalled the movie as I watched workers shove hunks of an old friend -- a huge laurel bush that until now towered over one side of my house -- through a similar chipper at 8 a.m. on a President's Day morning.

There are those whose natural instinct is a craving for cleanness, openness, simplicity. I, it seems, am not one of those. My house is full of strange twists and turns. I happily enclose it with overgrown shrubbery, partially protecting myself from the prying eyes of neighbors and passers-by. My laurel tree was, at one time, a small laurel bush. Like Topsy, it just grew. Finally, it almost entirely blocked access between front and back yards along that side of the house. It gradually spread its canopy over my second story roof.

The laurel had developed into a large sturdy tree, a tree that showed what laurel can do if given free reign. My kitchen, whose windows opened under its canopy, became increasingly dark over the years, forcing me to turn on the lights even during the day. More to the point, its canopy was depriving my neighbor's less robust hedge of light, causing some of her plants to die. I had to sacrifice my old friend -- to save my house from being fatally enveloped in laurel leaves, and to avoid open warfare with my neighbor.

The laurel, imposing though it appeared, put up little fight when subjected to chain saws. Workers swiftly chopped it into pieces, which were hauled to the front of the house and run through the chipper. My old friend is now a pile of sawdust, on its way to the dump. From dust it came, unto dust it has returned. The kitchen seems unnaturally bright, the side of my house sadly empty.

Somehow, life of all kinds feels unnecessarily short and precarious.