Someone I knew died this year.

The people who loved him grieved loudly.

They shared photographs. Saved belongings. Got tattoos. Wrote about regret, strained relationships, and how badly they wished for just a few more minutes with him. I watched from a distance, and I felt nothing about his passing. I stayed quiet.

Death has a way of bleaching people clean. Cruelty becomes “complicated.” Violence becomes “a difficult past.” The dead are polished into softer versions of themselves because no one wants to speak badly of someone who can no longer defend himself.

But memory is not always kind enough to cooperate.

I was there for a time. I remember him hitting his children. I remember hands around throats. Hair used as something to drag them by. Screaming. Insults. Rage that could ignite without warning. Authorities knew. People knew. Still, no one protected them. That is the man I remember.

He stole. He cheated. He lied. He abused. I knew him only briefly, and that was more than enough. I got away and never looked back. His children could not. He was their father.

Grief is cruel that way. People can love someone who terrified them. They can miss the person who hurt them. They can mourn what was real, what was good, or simply what they always wished could have been.

Their grief does not offend me; it’s sad seeing them hurt. But death does not absolve him. A coffin is not a baptism. Being mourned does not make someone good. And when a monster dies, sometimes there is no sorrow. Only the feeling of relief of knowing he can never hurt anyone again.