Apropos of Nothing

I do not mourn terrible people.

Call it a quirk cultivated from decades of lived experience.

It doesn’t matter their flavor of terrible. It doesn’t matter how they ultimately exited this mortal plane. I do not mourn them.

Now don’t get it twisted. Don’t confuse my lack of mourning for celebration. Apathy is not glee. Just because I’m not entirely sad to see someone’s exit doesn’t mean I rooted for their departure. Think of the Loki meme. “Yes, very sad. Anyway.” It’s a similar vibe.

I realize that this sort of attitude can lead to a lot of questions.

“Who are you to say someone is terrible?”

Well, I am me. And I get to decide who is terrible according to my criteria for terribleness. Just like everyone else does.

“What about that person’s family?”

What about them? Terrible people frequently have parents, siblings, partners, children, friends. That affords them no virtue. If anything, it provides them with their mourners. Do I feel bad for them to have lost someone dear to them? Eh. In the very vague, general sense of death sucks and it’s a lot of paperwork. That’s about it.

“You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead!”

That’s not a question. Also, I do not abide by the belief that an asshole never dies. If you don’t want to be spoken ill of in death, don’t be garbage in life. If accurately and factually recounting things a dead person said or did in their life is speaking ill of them, then your problem is not with me.

“Where is your empathy?”

In my pocket where I always keep it. I sprinkle it at my discretion. I also find it wasted on those who never developed their own sense of empathy during their life. Terrible people frequently fail to do this.

“What if it was a member of your family?”

Then folks would have to get in line to talk shit because my family canonizes no one. If you were terrible in life, then they’re going to put that in your eulogy, if they go to the funeral at all. Most of the time, it’s not even said out of disrespect. We all know how someone really was, and not saying it doesn’t change the truth. We’ll just go ahead and say it.

“What if it was you?”

Gonna be honest here. Being dead is probably going to be the bigger problem for me. Also, I’ll be dead, so I won’t really care. I have already accepted that there will be people who mourn me, people who are glad to see me go, people who celebrate my demise, and people who are entirely indifferent to the whole affair. I have no doubt that I am someone’s terrible person. Maybe I’m yours, right now, for writing this. Maybe I now fit your terrible person criteria.

That’s fine. What is it that they say? What other people think of me is none of my business. Well, that applies in death, too. What other people think of me after I’m gone is also none of my business.

I don’t expect you to mourn me if I should predecease you.

So, don’t expect me to mourn terrible people if they beat me to that finish line.

Because I won’t.