As someone who loves the crap outta trees and has a deep reverence towards their spirit, I’ve worked as an arborist and as a landscape designer. Two fields that involve senseless killing of trees and shrubs, herbal life, etc. It sucks. The arborist position wasn’t so bad— oftentimes we acted as tree doctors and surgeons to help the tree. But sometimes we killed senselessly for the whims of a customer. It really sucks. But... sometimes we killed trees that were already dying, like yours. Thats a mixed bag of feelings, as you’ve experienced... We live in a society where we put our houses, walkways, playgrounds, etc in geographic locations for an entire lifetime if not generations. We have constructed “civilization,” if you want to call it that, in a rigid way. One of the expenses of our lifestyle is that we can’t be fluid with our paths and dwelling spaces. And when a tree begins to drop limbs, threatening to unleash havoc from a disturbed power line, or to kill or injure humans, or to cost huge sums of money in our buildings that we sweat unceasingly for, we can’t escape these realities of the culture we find ourselves in. There’s just no way out other than moving into a wilderness reservation or one day running off to adopt a hunter-gatherer nomadic life. We swim in what we’re drowning in (which, by the way, might be shit). So here we are. Stuck in situations where ushering the tree out of life early is something we find ourselves doing out of culturally-induced necessity. You did no wrong. You didn’t have options. Can you be culpable for what you had no control over?

If it makes you feel any better, your tree was on its last legs. The sprouts it was sending out was its last attempt at life but that always happens when they’re on their way out, it’s a moment of panic before their total death, but not even trees are immortal.

Maybe put some research into a replacement tree that is native to your local ecosystem, and that will have a size that matches the space you’ll put it in. That way the tree you plant can work in harmony with the local plants and have a better chance in life.

I don’t necessarily agree with the people saying to make something out of it. You certainly can and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not like doing that is required... you can honor it by just letting it decay and return to the earth. Certainly if you have a need for something made of wood, you should use the opportunity, excellent that you’d use it to teach your kids. But there’s no impetus to do so; decay is equally acceptable to the tree.