What’s the worst thing you’ve found out about someone after they’ve died?

[Watisthis]

Going through a big shocker at the minute. Has anyone ever had something massive come out after a loved one has passed away?

A friend of my ILs died and left diaries from his time in the army, including in WWII - he was into his 100s when he died and didn’t ever speak about that time.

His son found out that he had been involved in the liberation of a concentration camp, as one of the first Allied soldiers into the gates. He wrote in detail about the horror and the process of liberation.

clesrly it was deeply traumatising for him given he never spoke about it. But his kids were so proud of him. And it was of historical interest.

so sometimes good things come of those diaries!

@AcrossthePond55
Because the widowed wife found out from the eulogy. The deceased had also not told his family he was lying to his wife about being adopted either. So the eulogy went something like “Nana Elsie always used to say that the best day of her life was when the lady from Barnardos knocked on the door bringing her baby Fred….” at which point the widow realised her husband had been lying to her for their entire relationship, and the shit hit the fan.

I don't know if it's a shocker, but after his passing, I was surprised to learn that my father suffered from PTSD from his time serving in Vietnam, and that Independence Day in the U.S. was particularly stressful for him. Around us, he masked his pain so well.

I remember a very sad evening after my paternal grandmother died, where my Dad sat down with a box labelled with his name that had been found in her house.

For context, my grandparents were strict Irish Catholics. My Dad had been brought up being beaten for "original sin" and had the fear of God put into him about absolutely everything. He was an alter boy, a church goer and very much upheld the moral code of my grandparents. They had disapproved of his marriage to my Mum because she was a Protestant and that was the first time he'd "disobeyed" them. A man in his late twenties.

I will never forget my Dad's face when he came across his birth certificate in the box and the realisation that he'd been born "out of wedlock". He was so angry and disappointed. It probably sounds like nothing these days but my Dad is now 83 and it has deeply affected him. He was loved by his parents despite their strict regime but they married because of him and shouldn't have done. They were both deeply unhappy and the children suffered because of it. The strict moral code they placed on their children was such a hypocrisy. I felt so sad for him at the time, this was 20 years ago now. Fortunately it did have the effect of freeing him in some ways. He was hugely supportive of me when I went through divorce and when I had a child when I was unmarried. No judgement at all. As I said it doesn't seem a big deal nowadays but it really was back then.

@Ratched that is so incredibly hurtful and I’m so sorry.

That is desperately sad. I'm so sorry.

Oh God and another, I found this out recently. I was brought up Catholic by my Irish Catholic Dad and London born Protestant Mum. I recently discovered that my Mum was in fact Jewish. My maternal Grandparents were anxious to avoid anti-semitism during the war and living in East London and just decided to be Protestant.

I was so shocked at this that I have started to grow my family tree on Ancestry and it's been eye opening. It's sort of made me question my identity. I've been a Catholic for all my 53 years although long lapsed, but actually I am Jewish from my mother's side. It's been an odd discovery!

Not a loved one, but I found out only a few years ago that my gt grandfather shot the butler and the family then paid off the widow. He got off scot-free. It was in the 1870s...

Why do you think?
Trying to blend-in, avoiding anti-semitism in post war Britain.

Sorry…but I’m sort of impressed by that one.

Was that for me?

If so, of course I understand but having been brought up as a Catholic, having had a convent education, having done first holy communion and been confirmed, it's quite a big thing to discover.

No judgement and quite honestly given their surname, it should have been obvious, but it still came as a massive shock. I've not yet discussed this with the rest of the family who don't know either, as far as I am aware 🤷🏻‍♀️

So sorry, I thought you were referring to my post until I read this! We have similar stories. So sad that our family members were forced to hide in that way.

I've always been a bit sceptical about this one but all the family are positive it's true but apparently my great grandad and his daughter used to hook up 🤢 she then got him to change his will on his deathbed so everything went to her.
She's still alive and married with kids.

You and me both 😅

Not found any diaries as such but we found in my DF’s papers a story he wrote about a serviceman going AWOL during WWII, he got caught & sent to prison. Certain this is the real version and the story we were told as children of him being mistakenly convicted is a lie to cover up what would have been seen as shameful behaviour postwar (and at odds with the persona he crafted).

My father found out his older siblings had a different father. They with his parents had kept it quiet from him and his young brother as my Nan had left her first husband. It was the 1940s and she thought of it as shameful. The family kept the secret til the 1980s when she died.

The most awkward was when doing a family tree just after a death.

The family were the Smith family. However, the son of Mrs Smith who died said he always found it funny that he never had any Smith grandparents. So did his siblings. They then began to wonder if their father was adopted or if maybe something was amiss somewhere. A couple of us were good at family tree stuff so were asked to search.

We then discovered that Mrs Smith had got married to Frank Smith and had the eldest two sons. Frank Smith then went to prison when she was pregnant with the second and when he got out he fucked off to America leaving her alone.

She then met a man called Peter Francis Jones. She got pregnant, but she couldn’t marry him because her runaway husband couldn’t be found for her to divorce him. It was a time when being unwed and pregnant was a problem.

So they moved 250 miles away, he became known as Franky Smith and the baby she was carrying (and the four subsequent ones) was registered as a child of her original marriage. The lived as if they were married for over 50 years. And that’s why the Smith children never had Smith grandparents.

luckily the two eldest children just felt lucky that their Dad had chosen to be their Dad, rather than robbed of their father. They were all upset at discovering they were half siblings instead of full siblings.

No-one was ever able to discover what happened to the original mr smith. He seemed to get off the boat in New York and vanish.

We always knew my grandmother was from my great grandfather’s second marriage. The whole family always believed his first wife died. She didn’t, she ran off with another man and they divorced, which in the late 1800s was pretty unusual. I am not sure if my grandmother knew the truth or not. My father only discovered it when doing his family tree in his 70s.

Also those of you now planning to burn your diaries, absolutely do it. I still haven’t sorted out in my head what i found in Dad’s house after he died and why it got to me so much (I wasn’t completely unaware of the situation). I wish he’d just got rid of it beforehand, he knew he was dying and we would have to deal with it.

One huge thing.like fasteners soap story huge.unberlievable.very sad.angry. and for the main person involved I want to cry for them every time it's mentioned.
And then an extensive trail led to a possible bastard involved in it all so maybe my family member was better off not knowing in some ways.butbit shaped their entire being and made them very very lost indeed with no peace even on their deathbed.then us left reeling.

Another involved murder but some of the family did no this.i think we only didn't know until later as we were too young to be told at the time.

I think it's just too bad that that knowledge was so upsetting to her that it changed the way she felt about him. I guess I can't see why the widow felt it was such a huge 'betrayal' that it 'undid' however many years of happy marriage they had. Did it make difference that he was adopted? It's not like he had a 2nd family or was a felon. I think my overriding feeling in that situation would have been one of sadness that he felt he had to conceal it, not anger that he had.

I'm adopted BTW, so maybe that gives me a different perspective on the situation.

When my grandad died, my gran received a letter from my grandad's wife looking to put claim on his 'estate'.

My Grandad was Ukrainian, who has served in WW2 against the Nazi's and had been captured and ended up in a POW camp. When the war ended he was placed in the UK where he met and married my gran (who was only 16 at the time!)

It turned out that my grandad (who was 10 years older than my gran) already had a wife and children in Ukraine. For the rest of his life he secretly kept in contact by letter and financially provided for his family back in Ukraine while going on to have a family of 4 of with my gran.

When my grandad dies (age 70+) and my gran found out, she was apoplectic with rage (understandably) but when the dust settled a bit, we could all kind of appreciate that my grandad was between a Rock and hard place, when the war ended he couldn't have returned to Ukraine, the tensions being what they were at the time, so he did the only thing he could do, work his ass off for the rest of his life to provide for his two families, and he did.

My mother always kept a diary, which she furiously scribbled in anytime she had words with anyone. She kept it about her person at all times. After she died, we read them...they were full of bitter, nasty, cruel comments, allegations, and outright lies about her "children". Always the victim. Just why would anyone want to do that? We were exemplary kids, clever, highly regarded graduates, professionals, kind, hard-working. Two out of three of us moved abroad, and you can understand why.

Freelance feature writer in relation to a couple of hobbies, yes, guilty as charged; a copy and paste wallah who feels the need to trawl forums, for sensational crap, no, innocent of the charge

Irrationally angry? Nah. Pissed off. I had little enough time to read all this stuff while having my coffee before my nightshift started to keep hearing the repetitive whinging of the self-imposed censors.

Etc

I'm now bored enough to type this on my phone 🤣

About my dad: a man died in a duel (saber) with my dad in med school in Austria back in the very early 40's. He then fathered twins in 1948 and left them behind when he came to the US in 1953. Paid child support until they were 18 but never met or spoke to them. I found out about both after his death and 18 years later I still can't wrap my mind completely around it. I've been able to meet my half-siblings on video calls and have a relationship of sorts with my half-sister, but the rest of my family refuses to acknowledge their existence. There's no denying it though: my half-sister looks very much like my Oma.

Hello there, I’m sorry this happened to your grandfathers uncle, to your family.

Did you know there are organizations for the families of soldiers who were said to have deserted (when they actually had PTSD) and that they march in the Remembrance Day parade in London.