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?

I had the same traumatising experience clearing out my beloved grandmothers flat

My DH died last year, I burnt all of his diaries. All 40 years worth . I felt that was too intrusive even for me, they were his private thoughts , and I'm sure that he sometimes ranted about me. I didn't want our kids to know what he felt about very personal stuff, so off it went. there wasn't anything marked personal on a folder, just the diaries.

Sometimes it is essential to check every piece of paper. My DM who had become slightly eccentric by the end, was paranoid about burglars so she used to hide share certificates in with her knitting patterns.

We also found her war records and those of various relatives, which she had never spoken of. I would hate not to have seen them, through some sort of inhibition.

There is only one thing that I would not want my son to know, after my death and I have destroyed all record of that. I think it's a balance of trusting your loved ones to take a balanced view, and destroying anything that could hurt them, as soon as possible.

Majorly weird thing to say about someone's lonely and depressed dead mum.

In answer to the question: I would want it all burned. I only write diaries when I'm sad and it wouldn't do anyone any good to read them. Things like poems from old boyfriends might be interesting to my children, but they wouldn't have the context for them and I actually I find the idea of DC burning these things that mean nothing to them upsetting. If I burn them myself at least I could honour them properly. But I want them while I am alive, so it's hard. I guess safe and instructions to best friend is the way forward.

Mine is nearly done! There are still a few 'embarrassing' things I need to dispose of. 😊

Can see lots of sides to this - I'd be someone who might read them.

You don't really know what you might find if you don't look. When we sorted my Gran's stuff, we did look through her boxes of letters etc. Not reading every one, just every now and then. She'd kept cards from her 18th birthday (she died aged 92), we'd never seen them before, they were amazing and beautiful and we've decided to keep them. They would have got chucked otherwise. Anything 'private' just seemed part of the past, so just felt enriching really. Maybe we were fortunate she kept things that she valued, not diaries with any torment or whatever.

I wouldn't destroy old diaries. Just think if everyone did this how much less we'd know about the past! If the person was close to me I may not read them though. Just keep them to pass down and be read by people further removed in the future.

If you don't want people reading your diaries once you're gone, destroy them yourself.

I think there are 2 categories of private.

1. The kind of private that I would only really care about while I was alive. For example, diaries of what I got up as a teenager might be embarrassing but otherwise are fairly standard teenage diaries and when I'm dead, people are welcome then to read them and chuckle. I just wouldn't want to be around when they did.
2. The kind of private that might hurt someone living if they read it. So, in your example a diary kept to discuss the difficulties of getting used to being a new mum. In that case, I would update it with a preface that calls out this was a 'moment in time' thing and not representative of motherhood as a whole - which I'd loved and very much love my children. Just something to set the context for anyone who might read it after I'd gone.

Which is precisely what I’ve done 😊

From a data protection perspective, the dead don’t have a right to privacy. Isn’t that interesting?

My inner historian would struggle to destroy diaries, letters etc. Also my inner nosey person!

I've stumbled upon things I never needed to see while going through someone's effects. I had asked this person if they had anything that needed deleting/destroying after their death and they said no. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Just tell a trusted person where the things are so they can be disposed of, some things can't be unlearned.

I would go through a file marked "private" though, as there might be things you'd need.

I would too - just a quick look to check nothing is needed - but we've had two relatives go bit peculiar in old age and hide important things and one couple who did have folder marked private but my parents were supposed to read as prior agreed as it had funeral wishes and financial information in but it wasn't for wider family viewing.

Old age or prolonged illness you have time to get rid of things sudden deaths especially if relatively young mean that can't happen.

Unfortunately I think with diaries and the like when people read them they tend to focus on the bad bits and remember those, rather than the good.

I think you need to think carefully about what you want. If you don't want someone to read something the only sure fire way to stop them is to destroy it, or scan it and encrypt it (even then there is a chance even with strong encryption it could be broken some decades in the future).

I think you either have to edit things or throw them out now or trust the people who may read them to understand that you were a person who had good times and difficult times and that what you've committed to your diaries are all part of that. I think most adult women, whether they're mothers or not, would completely understand the ambivalence and pain of being a mother as well as the joys but it may not be easy for a child to read. I know I tend to write/ record negative stuff with more force and passion than I do my joyous experiences — so perhaps it's important to diarise the good things more and edit or write and bin the painful stuff. Don't leave a Private file, it's asking too much to expect people not to look.

I went through an extremely traumatic experience in my late 20s and ended up with a crap therapist who made things much worse. She encouraged me to write at length and also to paint and draw and find other ways to express my distress. I've destroyed almost all of the diaries and writings and many of the artworks I produced at that time because I'm no longer the distressed person who produced them and they have no intrinsic value or merit.

Having cleared several peoples' homes after their death I'm an advocate of Scandi-style death-cleaning — cleaning up my 'stuff' so as to leave the minimum shit for people to deal with when I go. I've been shedding things and stuff since I hit my 50s and hope to have quite a minimal life as I grow older. People remember me as they remember me. No need to keep or leave bombshells or anything distressing.

Throw away things tou don’t want others to see now. If you die unexpectedly people WILL read things you would never have chosen to allow them to read, and it may upset them to no purpose

I know someone who looked through the papers of their parent after death and found all their affair letters and photos. That must have been stressful. My mum didn't leave anything so I didn't have the choice, but I suppose I would have looked.

The moral of the story is never put anything in writing!

It does make it harder when I'm aimlessly walking around the supermarket looking like I've had a stroke.

I was coming on to say this exactly - I think it makes a huge difference who's reading it and in what context - my elderly grandparents may not have known exactly when the end was coming but were realistic it was imminent and had a change to destroy anything upsetting or that they didn't want family knowing about after they'd gone, what was left they might have felt a bit embarrassed about being read while they were alive (given they were of the buttoned-up pre war generation with very different expectations of what you share with your children and grandchildren of today) but were fine with their great-grandchildren and their classmates seeing for social history purposes (most of their papers I'm afraid though are quite tedious, appointment books with mundane diary entries, lots and lots of bills and letters to banks etc, you forget how much used to have to be done on paper before phones and computers).

Totally different situation when my dad died very unexpectedly and relatively young, literally all the minutae of his life was littered around the house and had to be sorted through to extract the important papers, I ended up going into his phone/emails to get access to some important stuff too (e.g. contact details of people who were trying to get hold of him and worrying not knowing why he wasn't replying) which I TBH rather wish I hadn't as I certainly saw some things he wouldn't have wanted anyone else seeing, least of all a family member, I'm sure we can all imagine what kinds of things, no 'social history' or valuable personal insights (on a level that helped me celebrate his memory or maintain his dignity anyway) - this did lead to me mass deleting and binning stuff that perhaps could have been passed on to the next generation but I think that was the lesser of two evils overall. Those of you saying you'd definitely read diaries and personal papers etc even if marked private, if you were hit by a bus right now do you really have your life in such order you'd be happy for any old family member to see everything? Surely we all have some things we'd rather keep private even after death? I'm certainly more mindful of this after my experience with my dad for sure.

Good question- I kept a diary for about 10 years and then again when pregnant w DD. I have been thinking of destroying them before we move to our next (last) house. Prob wouldn’t destroy the ‘pregnant’ one but the teen/early 20s. I used to reread them but they’re just cringe to me now.

I think the trouble is for the "children" generation a lot of the stuff in these papers seems painful, personal or intrusive - but for the next generation down they might be fascinating. My granny's letters were burnt by my dad because some of them upset him (not about him but about hard times they'd ben through) but I would certainly have wanted to read them - I now don't have anything of hers.

Ps: I kept a diary during covid times for express desire of future generations to see the shit show we endured!

Future social historians and biographers are already going to be struggling for source material, as people nowadays don’t write letters, but just send texts.
If you also burn diaries and any other documents, you are destroying irreplaceable material.
We have archives of wonderful letters and diaries from previous centuries, often found in attics, with all kinds of fascinating detail. Imagine if the Pepys family had burned all his diaries!
Please don’t deny future generations the chance to learn about us or your parents’ generations, too.

You destroy anything you don't want other people to see. When my mother died, we cleared her house and it was surprisingly impersonal, except for a bundle of old letters that my father had written her. We did not read these. She had actually said she would let me read them one day, but I didn't want to do anything so intrusive.

My DH threw away boxes of his mother’s diaries. Literally decades. Him and the siblings didn’t want to read any of it.