Respecting the Life Force.

I’ve just done the job I’ve been dreading for weeks. I have a yucca plant that I took from my mother’s house when she died seventeen years ago, and for seventeen years I’ve nurtured it and watched it grow. When it stopped being self-supporting, I fixed a bracket at ceiling level and supported it, first with one line, then two, then three. But over the past few years it’s outgrown the room. As the top of the plant forced itself increasingly against the ceiling, the rest of it became ever more twisted and deformed. It was also getting in the way of simple processes like opening a cupboard door and closing the curtains at night, so something had to be done.

Several websites told me that it wasn’t a problem. ‘Yuccas are very tough,’ they said, ‘just saw it in half and the base will soon sprout new growth.’ It seemed a cruel, contemptible thing to do, but it was obvious I had no option. So I just did it, and now I wait.

It reminds me again of how strongly I’ve always valued the sanctity of life, be it the life of a person, an animal, an insect or a tree. In the final analysis, life is life, irrespective of the host in which it resides. I’ve always had to have a genuine and pressing reason to take or damage a life, and I still suffer inwardly every time I do.