Have you ever experienced the death of an adversarial or difficult person?

I felt a bit of relief and closure. But there is no joy for me in another’s death, other than the relief that I have out lived them, even if only for a short while.

And then I go on about my day.

Yes! YES! Thanks for bringing it up.
Ages ago. in a land far, far away, I was given an important and responsible overseas assignment. An elderly (he was probably only 60) local was the top dog in the office at the time and hated me, a younger foreigner, from the very second I walked in the room. He appeared to be a humorless, miserable, old guy and he thwarted every move I made. It was awful.
About 4 months after I had been there he died suddenly of a heart attack. I was asked by his family to be a pall bearer and perform at his cremation ceremony.
It turns out he really was a humorless, miserable, old guy and had no friends and few relatives who could stand in at his funeral.
I won’t lie. It was great to have him gone! I enjoyed going to work and accomplished a lot. Our customers enjoyed it too and business grew quickly.

I refuse to answer on the grounds I might incriminate myself.

Today, I think I look forward to one.

@zenvelo I think I tend to fall in the same category with you.

When a bully of mine passed suddenly shortly after high school, I felt vague indifference but certainly no joy in their untimely demise. I was certainly sorry for his mother, who was a nice lady and for his younger sister. I also loaned my art supplies to a mutual friend to create a banner for his memorial, but I chose not to attend.

Damn @LuckyGuy Sounds like you guys maybe had some serious cultural/generational clash in the coupled with the time-honored global tradition of workplace sabotage. I’ve certainly been there myself and know how frustrating it can be. Kind of sad about his memorial, though. It sounds like he didn’t forge many positive relationships in his lifetime.

I’ve known a few unsavory characters who passed. Not sure if “happy” is the word I would use, but im.glad they can’t contaminate this world anymore. I didn’t feel different when they were gone,because I was right in my assessment of them prior to their deaths.

Unfortunately, I know exponentially more good people who have passed,than bad.

@MrGrimm888 ‘Aint that the way it goes? It sometimes seems like the good are taken from us way too soon and assholes get to roam the Earth forever.

I felt at peace when the adversarial person died. It had been years since we had had contact, but the toxic tentacles of her actions reached into my life for a long time. This was a person who stole my identity, wrecked my credit and knew how I was struggling but didn’t care. She never admitted her culpability to me. We had been colleagues, and I had left some paperwork on my desk, where she accessed my SSN and birth date. Another employee caught her doing the same to her, 2 years later! I sued her and won, but barely got enough to cover legal fees, let alone any recompense for the damage she did. I saw an obit for her last year—she was only in her 50s when she died. I hadn’t thought about her for quite some time, but still got a sense of peace, just knowing she couldn’t continue to hurt people.

@LeavesNoTrace. Yes. That seems to be the pattern….

I used to work for the worst boss in the world. He still fouls the Earth. When he dies, I hope that I don’t celebrate or feel happy. I don’t want to be that person.
On the other hand, I hope the line isn’t too long for pissing on his grave.

I’d like to think I would feel sad if this happens to a certain someone…but I don’t think I am that good a person if I am being honest with myself.

@Lonelyheart807 No judgement. Your feelings are your feelings and you’re entitled to them.

^Agreed. It’s not your fault someone is such a jerk, that a nice person wouldn’t care if they died….

Many years ago I worked beside a guy who, though not my immediate boss, was at that time superior to me. He made a few unpleasant remarks about me in my hearing and in the hearing of others. I didn’t like it but I said nothing at the time or later. Many years later I heard he was dead.

It felt good, as though he had had the better of me all these years and now I had the better of him. I felt guilty at feeling good and thought he wasn’t really such a bad guy after all and the comments were quite trivial, which they were. I did feel that an unpleasant episode in my life had been given closure.

And then I thought what happened, happened and being dead he has no idea I am still alive. What kind of a victory is that? If what he said was so offensive why did I not stand up for myself at the time and let him know what I thought of his remarks. That might have been best but he was a boss so perhaps I did the right thing by remaining silent.

When I think of this it feels that incidents from my past still exist somewhere out there and not in isolation. I remember the context as well, the feeling of being young, the friends I could confide in about the injustices of work and the happiness of having what seemed like an infinite amount of time spread out before me.

I worked with a man at a time that was both the end of my college career and the end of his life. He was the professor overseeing my senior project, the final requirement my school had for graduation, and he had late stage cancer. I struggled with a lot of feelings about this – mainly, why are you still spending your time on students, go be with your family. He was my only resource for technical help with the project, but he was not helpful (for reasons which I understand were probably related to the fact that he was dying), and although I was aware that my project, relatively speaking, was not the important thing in this situation, it still had to get done or I wouldn’t graduate. He wouldn’t answer questions and was very critical of my progress with the project, which was delayed precisely because I had no resources available to me for help. I often felt guilty for being so stressed about the project while he was dying.

When it was very clear that he had little time left, his colleagues arranged a small party for him, for people who he had impacted to show their appreciation. Alumni came back for it. I ended up having a cold on the day of, and didn’t attend because his immune system was very weak. I left a card in his mailbox expressing appreciation and admiration. It would have been the last time I saw him.

I was really sad when I read his obit and learned that he was only in his 50’s, as I had assumed he was in his 70’s from his appearance. I guess the cancer had ravaged him. But I didn’t feel a sense of personal loss, really, which just caused more guilt. After his passing, I remember very guiltily wondering who was going to grade my project. This memory doesn’t make me feel like the best person.

It was in the mid-1960’s. I was a student in a high-school level seminary, run by the Congregation of the Mission. The student population was a total of 120, so all the students of each level generally had the same class schedule. Since I had transferred in as a sophomore, I had not had my first year of Latin. While my 10th-grade classmates were in second year Latin, I was with the freshmen, studying the first year course. An older priest who had retired and lived with the community was a helpful tutor, and helped me finish the year somewhat ahead of the freshmen. Other than my struggles with Latin, though, I adapted to the community life fairly easily. I was interested and accomplished in music even at that early age, and was one of the organists for services, as well as a member of the select Falsobordone, which sang at the pre-Christmas liturgies.After we returned from Christmas break, I continued to perform satisfactorily in my studies, until the end of the school year in June.

When we returned the next fall for my eleventh grade, I found that I was scheduled with the rest of my class to third year Latin. A new Latin teacher, had transferred in from parish work. Father Ross, seemed to be an agreeable, if somewhat strict, teacher and disciplinarian. As the school year progressed, I found I was struggling to keep up with the third year Latin Studies.

When the grades came out for the first quarter of that year, I was failing Latin. My aging mentor had fallen frail and now was residing in a nursing home, so I had no tutor available to me. So I approached Father Ross and explained the situation. He replied that he had no idea I had not completed my second year Latin before I started the third year. However, he said, the grades had already been recorded, and there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it.

The fact that I was failing in Latin had a deleterious effect on my other studies. The harder I tried, the more distracted I was, and the more my grades suffered, until things reached the point where Father Ross banned me from any musical activities until my grades improved. That added to my depression, and needless to say, sent my grades into a downward spiral from which I did not recover. I ended up failing, and being dropped from the school.

Fast-forward to about 40 years later. In a self-discovery workshop, we were instructed to write a letter of forgiveness to someone who we felt had hurt us very badly. After some introspection, I decided that I had been blaming Father Ross for many of my own shortcomings. So I wrote the letter. It was a catharsis. Although it was not required, I decided to try to contact Father Ross after all those years, and let him know I still remembered him, and how I had let his actions affect me.

However, when I contacted the order, I was informed that Father Ross had passed away about a year earlier. News of his passing saddened me at first, but then I realized that he had passed at almost exactly the time I had been forgiving him in my heart!. To this day I am truly amazed at the synchronicity, and it has been ten years.

One of my mother’s brothers sexually abused me for the first 13 years of my life, which had a terrible effect on my mental health for years and years after that. When he later got lung, and then brain, cancer, I felt nothing about his impending death. I hadn’t seen him for at least 20 years at that point, by my own choice.

But when he actually died, I cried my damn head off. For myself and for other victims, yes, but also for him. My reaction was very confusing for me to pick apart, but part of it was, of course, just a bone-deep relief that he could never hurt me or anyone else again. I also felt genuine sadness and relief for him. Not mourning, but acknowledging that he was deeply mentally ill and had lived a life of torment in his own way. I was glad it was over, for both of us. I did not go to the funeral.

@augustlan I’m so sorry you experienced that. I hope you have some peace now knowing that he’s gone.