It's always an interesting mental double-take when bad things befall a person who you may consider a rival or adversary.

Senator Ted Kennedy has many friends and many seething adversaries.

There's a German word - Schadenfreude - it basically means taking pleasure in other people's pain.

You likely know (or have known) people who relish in the pain of others - they laugh when someone trips and falls, they smile when they watch someone sucker-punched in a YouTube video, they are pleased when a colleague's car is smashed up.

I struggle with people like this and do my best to eliminate their influence from my life.

Love him or hate him, Ted Kennedy is a real person with real family and friends who love him dearly.

Of course, many people will turn their thoughts to Mary Jo Kopechne , her untimely death in 1969 and Ted Kennedy's involvement.

Ultimately, it is Kennedy who will have to deal with her death.

The Politico does a good job this morning of putting Kennedy's impact on the US Senate into perspective:

The Senate stopped in its tracks Tuesday with the news of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's illness -- not because a malignant brain tumor means he will be a missing vote or an absent committee chairman but because the Massachusetts Democrat is such a part of the place that his mortality reminds the Senate of its own.

"He captures all of what is exciting about the Senate," said Patrick Griffin, a former top Democratic leadership aide. "It's not just how good he can be, but he shows how good the institution can be. ... The threat to his mortality is a threat to all that is vibrant and possible."

Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), a Kennedy rival years ago, wept openly on the Senate floor. Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, Kennedy's longtime sidekick, choked up even as he promised reporters, "He is a strong guy, has a great heart, and we are confident he will be back."

"He is the only senator who could bring tears to my eyes when I was presiding and he rose to speak on the floor of the Senate," former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska told Politico. "There is something in the tone of the voice and the undisguised passion."

That same passion once made Kennedy a polarizing force in national politics. But Kennedy is a man who discovered himself in the Senate, just as the Senate discovered more in him.

John McCain made a comment about wishing Kennedy a full recovery.

The reality is there is no such thing as a "full recovery."

We will all meet our fate from something from which there is no recovery.

Mortality.

It's a reasonable expectation.