Privacy After Death

[DropCloths]

DFIL died last year and DH has been sorting through his papers.

One file was labelled "private" and I was slightly surprised that DH went through it as he had all the others- it contained some slightly personal medical things and some personal diaries from when DFIL had counselling. Nothing earth-shattering but definitely the kind of thing that (in life) you'd think of as private and not want others to read without your permission.

I'm not really looking for views on DH's decision to read it- his father, his decision. (I haven't read it). But it has made me think more broadly about privacy after death. I have all sorts of things I wouldn't want people to read after I am gone- again, nothing earth-shattering but things like diaries where I've written very personal things, or times when I've been letting off steam but what I've written doesn't represent an accurate reflection of my feelings over all (eg I wrote a diary when DC were small where I said a lot about the difficulties of adjusting to motherhood. I absolutely loved being with my DC when they were little but if you only read the diaries you wouldn't get that impression and reading the diaries might be very hurtful and misleading for DC).

Would you treat diaries etc after someone has died as private, as they are in life? Would you chuck them away without reading or would you read them? Are you planning to chuck any of your own private papers away to avoid loved ones seeing them after your death, or does it not bother you?

My DM found out some horrifying things about her DM (my nan) when she died and she went through their house. I think she wish she never saw it but my opinion is, if you have these things in your house at that age (she was 90 when she died) it’s not unreasonable to expect your children will find it.

Why don't you just get rid of the diaries now? My mums dying so we are in the process of going through all paperwork etc and everything is being shredded that's confidential. Obviously this can't be done if someone were to die suddenly but I wouldn't hold on to old diaries I didn't want anyone to read from a time I was struggling. I wouldn't read diaries but as proven by your dh, some people would and do read private things.

I think this approach is good, and I agree with the PP (@Babdoc) who said she was slightly horrified, from a social history perspective, that so many people were destroying deceased relatives' diaries. I think a lot of the people talking about privacy seem to be viewing reading the diaries as a distasteful search for gossip, but I think it might be lovely to see a relative who you have always known as an adult/elderly person through their own eyes in their younger days - I would be unlikely to judge them if I found out they had an affair or something - I would be reading it thinking about the texture of everyday life, which was so different even thirty years ago, yet alone longer back. I keep a diary and I would be happy to have relatives or friends read it after I died (though certainly not before!).

I think if people come across diaries etc, and don't feel comfortable reading them, you should think about putting them away for the next generation once they are old enough to be interested - your kids (or nieces/nephews etc) really won't be 'hurt' to find out that a great grandparent they never met had an affair or had PND or whatever, but the social history element would be fascinating. Or put them away for ten years and read them when the death feels less raw.

I was thinking about this only this morning. My DMIL passed away a couple of years ago and when going through her things, her diaries were found.

My SIL put them to one side and went back to them later. She did go through them, and found it comforting to do so. She said she could hear her mother's voice as she read them.

She kept her diaries in an annual pocket diary, so there was only a tiny space to write each day. Some days she just reported on the news of the day, or the weather, or some days she wrote down a passing thought, concern or happiness.

I haven't seen them but my SIL told me she'd been delighted to read about how happy she was when SIL announced she was pregnant and when my (now) DH met me.

I think it definitely depends on the person involved and your relationship with them. For my SIL there was no question that she would read them eventually and knew she'd likely be comforted by them.

If I were to discover that my DM has diaries I think I would have to think carefully before I read them, as I know she went through some very dark periods, so they could potentially be quite difficult to read.

Personally, I don't have anything to hide, or any skeletons in the closet, but I'd be so embarrassed if someone had to clear out my clutter! I need to have a clear out and keep on top of it, just in case!

Anne Frank's diary is a great example of all these issues. She herself wrote two versions of her own diary- she started rewriting when she got the idea that it might be something that could be published when the war ended (presumably hoping that she’d be the one to publish it). Her father Otto ended up publishing a version which incorporated parts of both of the versions Anne wrote, which he then edited further to take out parts he thought were embarrassing or too personal, which were only added back in decades after first publication and after Otto had died. And there have been yet more entries found recently- within the last few years- which hadn’t been published previously.

What the right approach was depends on so much, from who else is affected (for example, Otto took out entries which mentioned strains in his marriage) to what you think the purpose of publication was (he took out parts which he thought people might find offensive, so as not to detract from the overall message) to ideas around privacy (he also took out entries on things like menstruation as being too personal). And our judgements about all this will be different in 2023, seeing the diary as primarily a historical document, from what they might have been in 1953, seeing it as a personal document.

Skogstokig

Oh I completely agree @Babdoc ! Diaries and letters are what help bring ancestors to life beyond the very basics of birth, marriage, death and census. I do understand that some people may not want to read their own parents' personal papers, or have their children read theirs. But 30 or 50 years further down the line, time has passed, memories have faded and there isn't the shock/personal factor that there was intially.

Please don't burn stuff like this. Lock it up by all means and leave instructions that it isn't to be opened for 10, 20, 50 years. But destroying it... just no.

Make it clear then that you want the diaries and other documents destroyed- add a letter to your Will expressing this, and put all those papers in a specific box so there's no ambiguity. Of course you can't stop someone, but hopefully they will follow your wishes.

two views of this; firstly when my mum died during her very long and painful journey of ovarian cancer she kept diaries and i have them still. i weep tears when i think of what pain this lovely lady went through but i am glad i have them.
Secondly things can certainly come back and bite you. my hubby was brought up believing obviously that the family was a twin brother and a younger brother. he worshipped his mum he really did and she had a lot of high morals such as when he was a teenager think 15 he was seeing an older as in 19 years old lady. his mum went ballistic over it called this lady all the names under the sun as she had a son was a single parent as when she became pregnant the man did a runner.
anyway she died suddenly of a stroke was chatting to hubby thurs fri had a massive stroke mon told incompatible with life died tues. then after her funeral we found out that the younger child call him R was not his dads son; 18 months after marrying she conceived him with another man and there was question if it started before or after the wedding and how long it went on for.
just like that 64 years of marriage destroyed Dont know why but R was so mad he came down and beat up my hubby probably because he was close to mum and thought maybe he was in cahoots with her which he wasnt.
his dads health detiorated and for the last 2 years has been in bed in a home he is bed bound has numerous health problems including alzhemiers which i know you do not get from shock but it does not help night and day its all he keeps on about he shouts cries and rages over this.
my hubbys twin wants nothing to do with the family says he is just waititng for dad to die to get his money of which there wont be any as the monies are fast dwindling including his house profits due to the nursing fees being over 1200 a week.
so if you have secrets its best to either deal with them while you are alive or destroy all evidence before it destroys lives

Ohmygoodness this is really pertinent as I have just had diagnosis of advanced and incurable cancer. It's hard - because I'm a hoarder - but I am throwing away as much as I can - definitely don't want old diaries and journals read OR my parents finding my sex toys, thank-you very much!! Only problem is I haven't got the energy to do it but i am forcing myself!

A very interesting thread OP. I think as others have said a file marked ‘private’ has to be looked through. It’s different from a personal diary. When my MIL died she had kept I think possibly every piece of paper she had ever received during the whole of her life. She had also kept all the letters my DH had ever sent her from University and when he worked abroad. I think he has kept those I might read them if DH went before me.

This happened to me as well - I was only 17 and DBro and I found it when clearing her room.
We were young enough to find it funny and hideous at the same time.

My aunt kept diaries since childhood, but she felt that there was a bias in them that didn’t accurately reflect her feelings and she worried about upsetting her loved ones. She had a deep interest in genealogy, had written a couple of books so she appreciated the social history angle. Her solution in the end was to pay a solicitor to store them for 99 years with instructions to release them to a descendent then.

Personally I burned mine and this thread has reminded me to go through my stuff again.

What worries me more is my digital legacy. I would not want my dc trawling through my mumsnet history

I've got 2 email accounts, one with all the important stuff that DP will need when I die, that DP and DD automatically gets access to if I don't log into once a week.

And then there's the login that noone gets access to, that mostly contains the general detritus of life, and is mostly very boring, but also is the one linked to my Mumsnet, and Reddit accounts. That has emails from old partners that I don't want to get rid of, but that DP never needs to read etc.

I will offer a warning to everyone to make it very clear if you have diaries or folders of stuff that you don't want your loved ones to see.

My Mum told me she was happy for me to rummage through everything when she was gone, that she had a journal that she had written stuff in over the years etc, and she was happy for me and DB to read that stuff.

However there was also a box of Polaroids that I guess she'd completely forgotten about. Not something I ever needed to see, and very swiftly binned!

I'm so sorry for your loss and the shock but I hope you can see the funny side in times to come! (Or alternatively find and effective mind-bleach!)

And for what? The deceased person is not around to be distressed by any revelations.
No but other li ing relati es may be distressed by thoughts the dead person may have had about them.
To those saying throw away before you die, that's not always possible. Someone could die quite young in an accident for example with zero time to prepare
And that is exactly why I wont document any private thoughts.
If I die in the next hour I'm not leaving behind anything I don't want revealing about me.

I have a pact with a friend. If someone happened to either of us the other has strict instructions to go straight to their house and remove and destroy our...private things.

However there was also a box of Polaroids that I guess she'd completely forgotten about. Not something I ever needed to see, and very swiftly binned!

😱😱😱

I quite like the idea of having 2 boxes.

One which is private but it’s not a big deal to read.

The second, which is do not open this unless you want to be scarred for life.

This is so interesting, thank you for sharing.

I cannot believe the amount of people who are burning their relatives papers/diaries.

If Peter Farquhar's brother had burned his diaries without reading them, then it would never have been discovered that his partner murdered him and he wouldn't be rotting in jail for murder.

I find family history fascinating, I'd be so upset if one of my siblings burned our parents papers.

And to add to my message above, I've been writing letters to my children for them to read after I've gone, I want them to be nice surprises to them. I'd be gutted to think that they'd be burned without being discovered and read by them.

As someone interested in family history, I am rather horrified at the number of PPs burning diaries and letters etc. They are a treasure trove of documentary social history that you are destroying. And for what? The deceased person is not around to be distressed by any revelations.

I get you, but it does depend on what it is. A record of someone's struggles and distress is more likely to be upsetting to their surviving descendants than be an important historical record; I could sympathise with anyone's impulse to destroy something that doesn't really have anything to add to extant information available but makes them deeply unhappy.

After FIL died we cleared out his flat and found that he had kept everything, and when I say that I mean everything: every Christmas card we'd sent him, every piece of writing DH had done as a child, all the records from school, all the letters regarding medical problems, documentation relating to his hobby, letters from insurers about his business... everything. And on top of that, there was all the stuff he "inherited" from his DM... who had kept everything... birthday cards to and from FIL, his baby records, snippets of hair, photo albums from the 1900s, FIL's school books, all the letters he sent from his stint in National Service, a typed book of Uncle Jim's diary from when he enlisted in 1914, a journal she wrote in the 1920s (describing going for a walk with her date along the cliff path, finding a cottage selling afternoon teas, being asked if they would like to try some "summer drink", "Rather!" they replied ) There are also very old baby shoes, bonnets and hand made christening gowns, a nightgown which looks Victorian, just reams of personal things.

It's all fascinating stuff, I've read a lot of it because everyone concerned is no longer with us plus there was nothing too dreadful in it, maybe anything like that had been discarded? FIL's DF had abandoned his wife and young child so there was unhappiness but it either hasn't been recorded or it's been erased. I've learned so much about DH's sweet grandmother and feel I know her in a way, she seemed to be a warm hearted and genuinely lovely woman. Without those records, I wouldn't have that, and I do feel richer for it.

My mum read right through the diaries and notes kept by my aunt, including her thoughts about being in therapy. She found them quite upsetting and kept wanting to discuss them with me, but wouldn't let me read them myself, even the entries about particular traumatic events in my life which I would have found quite useful/enlightening to have her (my aunt's) perspective on.

In the end I got fed up and refused to discuss them with my mum any more. I'd been quite close to my aunt as an adult and saw her much more frequently than she saw my mum owing to where we lived. I didn't feel her diaries were any more my mum's property than mine.

@ReadingSoManyThreads genuine question - what would you suggest we should do with them? If we don't want to read them ourselves or have people we know read them?

This. Don’t hurt people after you’ve died by leaving stray hurtful stuff there to hurt them.