Ever feel bad about feeling good about somebody's death?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Ever feel really good about somebody’s death, then feel really bad about having felt good about it? I’ll give you an example.

During a lean period in my life some friends and I were renting an apartment from an elderly women, a bit of a curmudgeon and a bit crazy as well, (she was convinced two gay tenants were killing her flowers–“them fags is killing my hollyhocks! They never had spots before, and now they got white spots all over 'em since the fags showed up!”). She was quick to pound on the ceiling if we were walking around after ten o’clock and quick to jump on us when rent was due. She even once threatened to report us to the police after entering our apartment while we were out and spotting someone’s bong. Anyway, to avoid her wrath my friend Bob passed her a check for two months past-due rent with more rubber in it than an inflatable girlfriend. We were dreading the consequences and looking for someplace to sell plasma.

Two days later, Easter Sunday we awoke to an ambulance. The landlady’s family had found her, thoroughly dead.

As we sleepily stood on the stairs watching the coroner shove our late landlady into the wagon we heard a “Psst!” from above. Bob was leaning over the railing, motioning us over with his finger.

He gathered us together, closed and locked the door, checked the window shade, he looked to the left, he looked to the right, reached into the newspaper he’d been holding all morning and, like a magician, pulled out the unopened envelope with the poison check in it. Turns out, while bob was so helpfully holding the door open for the medical examiner to wheel the gurney out, he was simultaneously snatching the envelope and concealing it in his paper.

Nobody said a word. We Just looked at each other, started laughing maniacally under our breaths and started dancing a tribal dance that would have given Margaret Meade cold shivers.

I feel kind of crummy about it now. Celebrating somebody’s death like it was a snow day. And even now, reading what I wrote above I’ve kind of painted the landlady as worse than she really was, sort of to justify it.

Incidentally, the gay couple adopted the landlady’s hollyhocks, and nursed them to back to full health.

2

There are two—no, OK, only one—guy I’d like to see dead. He hates me, I hate him. Hw would dance on my grave and I’d do the same on his. I’m glad he doesn’t live on the East Coast, or one or the other of us might wind up pushed under a subway.

The other guy, I wouldn’t mind seeing him get a really bad cold, but dead? Nah.

3

Ah! But the question is “do you ever feel a pang of guilt about enjoying the thought og him under those subway wheels” Eve?

4

When I heard that Ted Bundy was executed, I was glad. When I heard that Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison, I was glad.

I realize that this is very un-christian of me, but I just can’t help it.

5

My father’s mother (note: she is not, AFAIC, “my grandmother”) is a royal bitch. She was cruel to my mother when she was alive, mean and nasty to my wonderful maternal grandmother (my “baba”), and largely ignored my sisters and me all our lives. She is a hateful, greedy, selfish, self-centered old shrew.

I no longer speak to her at all, and haven’t since she bad-mouthed me to my new step-sister AT my father’s wedding 10 years ago. She sucks the life out of everyone else in my immediate family, and pretty much no one can stand her, but they put up with her because it’s “the right thing to do.”

When she dies, my father will finally be free to live his life the way he wants to, and perhaps even move to L.A. because he won’t have to be there to take care of her whiney, sorry self anymore and he won’t have to feel guilty for abandoning her when she’s old and sick.

It’s not that I’ll exactly be glad when she’s dead, but a part of me will feel some relief that I won’t have to live with the guilt I now feel because I have a sick, old grandmother to whom I don’t speak.

And I even feel guilty for writing this.

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” - Anne Frank

6

I think this OP is an example of a time when the “best” (most revealing) responses will go unwritten.

A couple of people have already said they feel guilty writing about this subject, and the “confessions” are relatively mild.

That said, and kinda related, I felt guilty when our grocery store was robbed – and the check I wrote that day has never cleared the bank. Felt even more guilty after I found myself wishing I’d bought more groceries! (Stores have insurance for that, don’t they?)

Geez, I feel like I scammed someone.

7

I did not attend my 20th high school reunion three years ago, but my best friend did and told me of the death of a former classmate – he died of AIDS-related complications.

I was glad to hear that the SOB died because he went out of his way to make my life hell in high school.

Y,know, being the bastard that I am, I’m still glad the SOB kicked the bucket.

8

Have I ever felt bad about feeling good about someone’s death? Sure. Do I always feel bad about feeling good? Hell no! Some rat-bastards deserve to die (yes, according to me and my standards alone - this is my opinion isn’t it?). Not all life is precious. The death of some people makes the world (as a whole) a better place. I’m with PunditLisa. I was nothing but glad to hear that Jeffrey Dahmer was dead. When I hear of such happenings, I ask myself… “Is the world a better place without this person?” If I think the answer is “yes”, I tend not to feel guilty for my glee (well, perhaps glee is to strong a word, but I was going for the alliteration :slight_smile: ).

9

Y’all offed her over a damn rent check?

10

Well Beetle, you caught me. I killed her. She caught me in the act of peeing in her hollyhocks I could leave no witnesses!

And I would have gottn away with it if it wer’nt for you meddling kids!

Inky

11

I really never felt bad when that “Ernest goes to…” guy died and I was happy…

12

Woah there… Them’s 'Pit words Dem. :wink:

BTW, that guy ruled.

Things are random only insofar as we don’t understand them.

13

There was this guy with the character of a gangster that would start shit with me every time he showed up at my regular watering hole here in Tokyo.

I was pretty sure he was an alcoholic and figured being an asshole went with the territory. I’m a gaijin, he had some kind of complex.

I had to put up with him on an occasional basis for a couple of years and one day my friend, the owner of the pub, said he had died a couple of days earlier. Drank himself to death.

At that moment I did not exactly feel good, but I felt coldly ambivalent and I managed a ‘so what’ to myself and mentally scratched one of life’s little irritants off my list. I felt a pang of guilt for that.

As I sit here typing this post, I am once again thinking, “Well, uhm, you know…fuck him.” No pangs at the moment–could be in a bad mood.

14

I have two of them. I was glad to hear of their deaths and still am, when I happen to remember them. And I don’t feel the least bit guilty about it.

Crystalguy

15

I posted this a while ago, but what the hell.

We once had a next door neighbor named Rocky. My mother always hated him, for no particular reason. My mother can be a bit of a snob, so none of us paid attention to her.

Rocky had some horrible stomach disease, and he was a Vietnam vet, as is my father. My dad thought he was a little wierd, but they would do neighbor stuff together, like help build eachother’s decks. Rocky’s wife didn’t have any kids, and my little sister was about 6, and adorable. Mrs. Rocky would play with my little sister.

We were going on vacation when the house sitter backed out. Rocky volunteered to watch the house, water the plants, make sure the furnice didn’t explode, etc.

When we came back, he told us that we had been robbed. That the books in the book case had been all pulled out of the shelves, that he thought “stuff had been taken.” But not the TV or stereo or computer. Turns out a necklace my grandmother gave to my mother on her 16th birthday, a single pearl with a tiny diamond from Tiffany’s, was missing. My father’s gold pocketwatch from his first marriage was missing. My grandmother’s fur coat, the only heirloom I was going to get, was missing. Intensely personal stuff.

We called the cops and found out Rocky had a rap sheet. They got a warrent, searched his house and found most of the stuff he stole. He had already fenced my dad’s gold watch and my grandmother’s coat.

The next day an ambulence rolled up. His stomach condition killed him. My mother danced around the house singing “Ding dong, the Rocky’s dead! Which old Rocky? The wicked Rocky!”

I was happy he was dead then, and am happy he is dead now.

16

I knew a man when I was growing up who’s purpose on Earth can only be described as “problem causer for others”. He was loud, always drunk, people were scared of him. He was the kind of guy that would point guns at people just to scare them. One day he ended up killing himself by playing Russian Roulette at a party in front of a group of people. (Yep, he was a dumb-ass to his dying day) We’d all seen him do it before, we’d just assume that the gun probably wasn’t loaded. Not only am I not the least bit sorry that he’d dead, but my brothers says that the only reason people went to his funeral was to make sure he was really dead! Now THAT’S an unloved person!

New and Improved
Enright3

17

BTW, that guy’s dead?!?!?!! whahaapuun?

18

http://www.bellenet.com/images/celebs/varney/varney01.jpg

“Hey Earl, I’m dead!”
Woooo Hooooo!

Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking
when I said I’d like to smash every tooth in your head.

19

My used-to-be next door neighbor (before I moved back to my mom’s in Feb) isn’t dead, but I wish he was. He is an old coot killed his wife last year by not taking her immediately to the hospital when she had an aneurism. No one can prove anything of course, but there’s ample room for suspicion.

Anyway, he’s a dirty old drunky, and when the wife was alive, he would yell, curse, and threaten her to all hours of the night when he was in a drunk. Woke the neighborhood. After he died, of course, no one in the house to scream at, so he broadened his horizons to next door, me.

Our side doors faced each other across a shared driveway, maybe 30 feet apart. He would stand on his porch and shake his gnarled old fist and say, “I know what you’re doing in there, I know you’re in there, you son of a bitch!” Keep in mind I’m female and lived alone.

The wife died in June or July, and I gave him til the end of the year to drink himself to death. Somehow he’s held out, defying all logic and medical likelihood. I figured I could take it for that long and then celebrate his passing in an appropriate way, with some nice champaigne or something. It turned out I had to sell the house just to get some peace.

If I heard today he’d died, I’d go out and buy the house a round of drinks. Maybe two. And not feel bad about it at all.

20

You are one cold son of a bitch, Demo.