sort of a weird question...

I had text edit open with a document I was reading and I minimized it to the dock. I ended up deleting the text document by dragging it to the trash and emptying the trash. But I had forgotten that I still had the document minimized on the dock. I clicked maximize and I could still read the document even though I had deleted it... I closed text edit and it dissapeared. Is the document still on my mac somewhere, or is it gone? I sort of thought that if a file is in use, the trash can won't let me delete it.

I tried the same thing and the exact same thing happened. Usually trash will tell you that it is in use like you said, but maybe with text edit it's different. But it was deleted, so it will not be on your mac, rest assured.