What's the weirdst thing you found when someone died?

[ferriswheel]

I was thinking of writing a diary. Something to help me figure out why i sabotage my weight loss success and why i tolerated the bad behaviour of my husband for so long.

I dont at all expect anything untoward happening to me but the idea of my inner most thoughts being read by whoever...

Anyway, have you ever found anything that you shouldnt have, but had to deal with because of the circumstances?

Someone may have already mentioned it but Swedish Death Cleaning is supposed to be the new Marie Kondo. I scoffed when I heard it first but after reading this thread I think everyone should do it!

Regarding things being digital now

I made my son a Facebook account (he's ten, still doesn't know) and I tag him in all photos and message him regularly of the date, what we've been up to that day etc and TONS of "love you"s"

Best thread I've read in ages! I don't have a weird story as such but after my uncle died my aunt found out he had fathered a child with another woman.This secret child was born just 3 months after the birth of my aunt and uncle's own child.

Not weird as such, but I found my dad's diary after he died very suddenly of liver failure do to chronic alcoholism. His friend found him on his living room floor, covered in sick. He was 53.

He'd been an alcoholic for for decades and never admitted he had a problem or sought help - or so I thought. In his things I found a diary from a rehabilitation charity he'd been seeing. He had to write down his feelings, and I found out so much about him reading that. I won't ever read it again because it upsets me too much, but it's comforting to know he was trying to kick the habit

I didn't help with any of my GP houses when they died (tbf I was only old enough for one of them and his death destroyed me) but I love reading about the love letters and photos people have found, it's beautiful. And the PP that posted about writing letters to their DC is the same, I have a memory book for each of my DC which I don't write in as much as I should but I have started writing funny things they do in my diary to transfer to their books

Years ago we had a holiday in a rented house in France, I'm guessing it had been a family home and the owners had died and their heirs had rented it out as a holiday home. BiL found a bundle of papers in a cupboard but couldn't read them as they were in French and German. I had a quick look to see what they were and I know I shouldn't have but couldn't resist reading them. They were letters between family members about the husband who worked in the docks and had been arrested by the Nazis for spying, the story unfolded gradually, he was imprisoned, tried and eventually sentenced to death. A tragic story but fascinating. The house was no longer rented out the next year and I did wonder if it was because the family found that someone had been reading their private papers (maybe that's just my guilty conscience). Or whether the house was just cleared and the letters thrown out.

Not weird but really sweet. After my mum died when I was a teenager I found her recipe for banana bread in my recipe scrapbook. I could tell she'd written it shortly before her death because her writing got messy the iller she became. Of all the things preparations for her to make!

When DH’s GM moved into a nursing home, he and I helped clear her house. There was knitting hidden everywhere - in bookcases, behind cushions, in the larder, everywhere there was some starter knitting!

Yearofyouremember
Keep the files as the daughter of someone who suffered as a child I wish I had been able to find out more when she was alive. I misunderstood her all of my life until it was too late because she refused to talk about it. They might feel sorry for you but I think it’s more likely they will feel compassion and empathy xx good luck xx

We found two empty pens tied together under the tv cabinet months after we got it in our house from late great grandparents. I asked other family members but no one knows what it’s purpose was. Suppose we will never find out.

With one GM we discovered over 150 bars of soap. My darling grandmother had a terrible fear of running out of soap as this had happened during the war. She ensured my grandads cleanliness for the next ten years until he died.
We also found all of her old driving licences- like little red books- that were filled with endorsements.....and they were all for speeding. My grandad was amazed as he never knew about one! Especially when he saw the fines written next to the endorsement stamp and he knew she must have paid out of the ‘ housekeeping!’ But he loved her so much he told my mum it was his fault for buying her jaguars.

My other grandma was 91 when she died. Or so we thought. She was actually 94 and had knocked a few years off to make herself the same age as my grandad. The mad thing though was that she must have altered her birth certificate as her wedding certificate showed the false DOB . Every passport she had had the wrong date on it. And we realised that every milestone birthday she had was actually out by three years! Made us laugh to think of relatives flying in from all over to celebrate her 63rd, 73rd, 83rd and 93rd birthdays.........
Plus the sneaky old girl must have got her pension three years earlier than anybody knew! How she kept it up all those years I’ll never know.

I've heard of empty pen tubes being used to hide rolled up notes before. Maybe it was once a secret stash taped under the bottom of the tv cabinet?

Alternatively, is the tv cabinet in completely good working order? Wonder if someone improvised a sort of repair for part of it using the pens?

Did they put any wires threw the pens from the TV to keep them tidy?

I was thinking the same as a previous poster - can you get a job at their school? If not... Can they definitely get a place at your school (is it not over subscribed?)? If so, I'd speak to their current head and explain your predicament, that you love the school, but need to move them for financial reasons. It could be that they'd reduce their fees to keep them. If not, at least it'd clear the air and they could go back at 11+ without awkwardness.

Great granny had dementia and was hiding money all over the house, so could be! She hid notes in screwed up tissues in handbags.
It was stuck on the bottom and tv cabinet is not broken in any way.

My GF remarried a few years after my GM died. He was in his 80s. After he died my parents found a box of viagra with the label dating it to the time of the wedding

I had a much loved Great Aunt who I was always close to. She died, never having married about 15 years ago. She was a very beautiful woman in her time and had many suitors and 'gentlemen friends' and it always seemed a little strange that she ended up on her own.

She did occasionally allude to a chap she saw during the war but refused to give any details and said she didn't see him after the war ended but wouldn't tell me why.

When she died I was helping to sort through her things and found a large photograph in a paper mount of a chap in uniform. In the corner was a doodle in ink of two stick figures together with lots of little stick figures behind them and it said something like, 'This is you, me and our family' along with declarations of love.

I still have the photo in the bottom of a draw... it's both sad and beautiful, but whatever happened between them, there was no chance my aunt was going to tell me, so I shall never know.

My nana had kept all the cards congratulating her on the births of her children, all of those children were in their fifties when she died, very sweet.

Lululota wow, I can’t imagine how it must feel to find out something like that.

DH's grandparent died within a couple of months of each other and we went to help clear out their house. In one of the spare bedrooms we found viagra stockpiled floor to ceiling!! We also found out they were 40k in debt, all of it ran up in the past few years by DH's grandad bulk buying on the internet! Both of them were so frail they could barely walk toward the end so I think he must have been feeling overly optimistic when he bought that viagra!

They'd both been so frail for years they could barely get in and out of bed on their own, so I

I'm very relieved to read this thread and find out that other people have spent a lifetime concealing parentage.
I wonder if it still happens today?

After she died we discoverd
my poor grandmother was made to take in a baby my grandfather fathered with a mistress. She wasn't even officially adopted .
My Granny was such a loving person and was forever buying giving neighbourhood children sweets and toys. She adored children and in sad she died before mine were born.
There was never any indication that my "aunt " wasn't her own.
I am just astonished that she never said anything to anyone.
I'd be so bitter.

@yorkshireyummymummy - surely it’s the other way around and she did herself out of three years of pension?

I found my gran and grandfathers love letters written during the war while he was in the navy. In one he described his best friend being swept overboard in the Atlantic one night, just awful.

We found out my grandma was a bigamist. She had been married to one man before the war, then left him to work as a nurse at the other end of the country. Met my grandad and married him. Poor first husband left behind and actually lived with my grandmas mum and dad.

When first husband discovered that my grandma was pregnant (with my dad) he granted her a divorce (she hadn’t asked before!) and never married again.

Never had a clue about any of this before!

Also found photos of her in a bikini in about 1935 looking carefree and beautiful.

When my other grandma died, the one thing in her bedside drawer was her husband’s whistle (he was a train guard) - he had died over 30 years earlier when she was only in her early 40s, but she never remarried. Also found all their love letters sent in the war as she was evacuated and he stayed in London.