One of the most memorable words from the great Denzel Washington was, “You’ll never see a U-Haul behind a hearse.” It’s a powerful, self-explanatory message that simply means we can’t take our material possessions with us when we pass on.
In some cases, however, it’s much to the chagrin and shock of those left behind. A Quora thread from a while back revealed some of the most disturbing and heartbreaking items people found amongst their deceased loved one’s belongings.
Many of these stories unveil a different side of the individual, for better or worse. These are quite lengthy but compelling reads, so you might be here for a while.
#1
I was an in-home caregiver for nearly eight years for Thelma. She was in her eighties, had southern roots and was quite a character.
She would have these terrible panic attacks. Since my home was only a few blocks away; she’d call me night or day and I soon became her ‘wahmbulance.’ She would even have the other caregivers call me when they were on duty and she had a panic attack (which pissed off a few other caregivers). I had figured out the best way to get her out of her panic was to ask her questions about her life. For eight years, she told me the sweetest, most joyful, funniest and also heartbreaking stories that were her life. I had grown very close to Thelma by the time she passed away.
She once asked me help her clean out clothing in her closets. She had been a seamstress and had three closets just bulging with beautiful clothing. The task quickly became impossible because every piece of clothing I’d bring out; she’d proceed to tell me entire story about what was happening in her life when she wore that item. If every piece of clothing had a story attached, it would take years to finish the closets. I loved her stories, didn’t want to hurt her feelings but also had to figure out a way to get the job done.
I finally decided to get three different boxes and told her she had 10 seconds to decide on each item of clothing. The boxes were marked as follows: (1) Donate, (2) Sell and (3) Beautiful Stories. We finally made progress and you can guess which box filled up the fastest.
Back to my original story; Thelma passed away one day after my birthday in 2014. Can you believe she promised me she would not die on my birthday because she didn’t want my birthday to have any sad moments associated? As I said, Thelma was a character… a sweet one.
Thelma’s estranged son Richard, asked me to help sort out her home after her passing. As we were going through Thelma’s belongings; I’d run across items that triggered some of her Beautiful Stories. I would relay the stories to Richard as we were sorting her property. Richard was amazed I knew almost everything about his mom’s life. Many of the stories he had never even heard.
During the sorting, he found a small shoebox in the back of a bottom drawer. Upon opening the box, he began shrieking, “Oh my god, oh my god, what the hell is this?” I quickly came over to see why he had reacted so crazy.
Inside the box was a morbid collection of about 20 teeth, clutches of different colored hair in little plastic bags, a bunch of what looked like fingernail clippings in plastic baggies, and a four-inch dried and twisted up stalk of something with a bow-clip attached in the middle.
It took me a moment, but then I remembered Thelma had told me the story about this box. It really hadn’t registered with me when she told me about the box originally; but, there it was. I must’ve thought she was joking; but, no, she wasn’t. Asking him to calm down, I told him I knew about the box and suggested we take it into the other room. We took it into the kitchen and sat down over a cup of tea... we really needed a break anyway.
We opened the box together and I began taking out the items one by one. Upon closer inspection, you could see these very tiny markings or labels on almost every item.
The teeth; they were Richard’s baby teeth and his brother Ron’s baby teeth (Ron passed away a year before Thelma) and apparently the tooth fairy had helped Thelma collect each one.
The bags of hair were all labeled differently; My sister Jane funeral 1947, Ron 1st haircut 1950, Rich 1st haircut 1953, Mom funeral 1962, Aunt Mabel funeral 1964, sister Dorothy Jane funeral 1965, etc.
The fingernail clippings were labeled similarly to the bags of hair but included clippings from her late husband, her father and her son Ron also.
Image credits: Becci-Winkler
#2
My uncle Don was an odd guy. It wasn’t until my teen years that I really understood that. When I was younger, he was friendly to me, so that was enough. He was a loner, particular, moody, intense, especially after he divorced and separated from his wife. No kids.
My uncle’s mother, (my grandmother), was tough by many standards both flattering and not. She was Catholic, with a big crush on the priest of the local church, Father Kramis. During Don’s growing up, she was, as my dad called it, “a barmaid”. A title chosen specifically for its implications. Clients became husbands. Husbands chosen from the Petri dish of a low-end bar. She was married three times. It was something she was bad at, and her choices in men got worse over time. My uncle’s father was the second, after my father’s. A violent drunk, I heard. Life for Don growing up held a lot of misery.
At maybe 15 years old, Don was sent to the seminary in Kenmore Washington. For his mother, ”priest” was the highest honor and greatest social standing one could attain. No doubt, a play on her part to both make him a better child than his birth order or genetics established but also to get out of the burden of his care. She was no cook, no housekeeper, he probably felt lucky if she gave him any positive attention at all.
So jump forward a few decades to my uncle, a trucking mechanic, living alone in the Industrial District, South of Downtown Seattle. An area a little like a truck stop, although more sprawling, with a house or two sprinkled in as legacies. It was an oddly promiscuous area. Eerily quiet late, yet with random singular people as if aliens on a poignantly desolate background. Devoid of trees, cars, open businesses, with wide open streets for long haul trucks to easily navigate. At one point, the Green River killer had his heyday with prostitutes near here.
Don had been an alcoholic for years, but AA helped him find sobriety. He was a private guy, with a lot of idiosyncrasies. He was passionate about music and keeping his tools in order, but a wreck of a guy in many indescribable ways, looking back on it now.
When I was young, I never really gave all this a second thought, just accepted it as his nature, less curious to explore the whys and why-nots. My father and uncle, step brothers, were at turns friendly and estranged, year to year. My father would occasionally stop by to visit, but Don would never let my dad in. One time dad got a peek into the interior and it was a hoarders glory, piled high to the ceiling, so he knew it wasn’t personal.
Years pass. My uncle, when he was maybe in his late 50’s, was swindled out of his life’s savings. He loaned his long-term, "like-family" boss and his wife $20K to help them float heir truck repair shop. Come to find the money was more like a nest egg for their future. Soon after, they ran off, leaving him broken and unemployed.
It was a lousy life filled with sadness, failure, misplaced loyalty, an inability to nurture relationships. Eventually it became obvious he was sick with something terminal, we didn't know what because he never saw a doctor in his adult life. So with much sadness, and no way to reach him physically or emotionally, he died facedown in the dirty shag carpet hallway of his apartment. My dad received a call from someone we didn’t know two or three days after the fact.
This story has two punch lines.
When my parents went to clean out his home, among the heaps and mounds of a rotten life were dozens and dozens of high heeled shoes, both well- and never-worn, women’s clothing, size XL, and a sturdy noose. It was a revelation that brought clarity to a lot of things: the solitude, the neighborhood, the sadness. I recall my parents both deeply rattled from the experience. Like someone might feel after watching a dog being hit by a car, traumatized, yet removed and either unable or unwilling to describe it in greater detail.
Something that had occurred to me at various points in my adult understanding of
Image credits: Pam-Patterson-11
#3
When I was at university back in the mid 1980s, I was dating this beautiful, blonde, woman whom I’ll call “Karla.”
She was attractive, quite smart, athletic, and I believed that at that time we were very much in love.
We dated for almost two years, and I had given her an engagement ring, which she had accepted. I had met her family, and she mine. We all got along very well, and I spent many weekends at her family’s home in an upscale city just outside of St. Louis.
Halfway through our Senior year, we had gone to her house for Christmas. They really outdid themselves on the Christmas decorations, and I was happy to be spending the holiday there. My parents had gone to Aruba, and her parents always treated me like visiting royalty. I always enjoyed my visits there.
Two days before the holiday it had begin snowing heavily, and Karla’s father, a Doctor, was on his way home through the worsening snow. Somewhere on the Interstate, just before his exit, he was k**led in an horrific accident. I truly liked the man, and I was probably as distraught as were Karla and her family.
I stayed for a day, and then, wanting to give them some privacy to grieve, drove back to my parents’ house, and spent Christmas with a couple of cousins and my Aunt and Uncle. Karla and I spoke almost non-stop over the break, and I went back for the funeral. It was as bad as you could imagine. Her sister, and Mother were withdrawn, and the atmosphere of sadness was palpable. Their father and husband was dead, and it could be no better. It was a very dark time.
Karla stayed at home for the first few weeks of the semester, and then came back to school. I supported her emotionally, and our relationship actually strengthened. She began to pass through her grieving, and life somewhat went back to normal.
Around the beginning of spring break, her Mother asked if Karla and I could go through her Father’s effects, and begin packing them up. She had planned to sell the house as without his income, she couldn’t afford to keep it. She also couldn’t bring herself to enter his study. There was life insurance, and I really believe she just wanted to live in a place where his “ghost” would not be there in everything she saw. They had been married for over thirty years, and I understand that feeling.
His office was neat and well-ordered, and for the first days, we sorted among the papers and books, putting the important papers where they could be easily found and boxing up the lesser documents. Books were boxed up, mementos and accent pieces packaged for the move as well. Oddly, I noticed that, although he had pictures of his wife and two daughters, there were no pictures of him as a younger man, or of his parents. Unusual, but not remarkable. I asked Karla, and she simply stated that he didn’t talk about his youth or his family. Not altogether unheard of, and her explanation put it out of my mind.
In the back of the closet was an old Mosler safe. One of the kinds you see in the movies with the ornate decorations on the front. An antique, but still, in excellent shape and functional. We stood looking at it for a few minutes, and I had no idea how to open it.
Karla walked over to his desk and removed a piece of paper that had been taped to the bottom of one drawer. She told me that her Father had told her never to open the safe, and only use the combination in the event of an emergency.
It took us several tries to open the safe, but we finally succeeded.
What was inside, took me, and Karla, by complete surprise.
Folded neatly inside, on top of a shelf, was the uniform of what we later found out was a Major in the SS. The tunic, cover, slacks, medals and insignia looked like they had been kept clean and maintained. It looked like it had been freshly dry-cleaned and was ready to wear.
Under the shelf were several drawers, and in each one were his Ausweis, SS identity cards, daggers, commissions, promotion to the SS Medical Corps, and letters from superior officers; one was even signed by whom we later learned was Heinrich Himmler. There were also a significant quantity of Gold Krugerrands which he had obviously put aside for an emergency.
The man who would have been my father-in-law was an SS Doctor who, I now believe, had worked under Mengele at one of the camps. In retrospect, it is still incomprehensible that he could have kept this a secret from his daughters, and presumably his wife. It also seemed logical. My own father was in the Navy during WWII, and never spoke a word about his service.
With the exception of the gold, we put all of the contents of the safe into a footlocker, and she locked it up with a padlock. I don’t believe she ever told her Mother or sister about what we found except for the coins. She also swore me to secrecy.
I know it shouldn’t have, but it gradually soured our relationship. She knew that I possessed terrible information about her family, and felt that I would always harbor ill feelings toward her for what her father was. I was numbed by what we found, but couldn’t hold her responsible for his actions.
Unfortunately, our relationship slowly fell apart. She and I had gotten along so well. We were in love, and had planned on a life and a family of our own. As the poem goes, it ended not with a bang, but a whimper, and less than six months later, she gave me back the ring, and we never spoke again. We both graduated, received our degrees, and went our separate ways.
With the advent of the internet, I learned, a few years ago, that her father had been on the “wanted list” of the Wiesenthal Center. For several months I mulled over whether I should report this to them, but by that time, he had been dead over thirty years and I could not see any reason to disturb his family with reporting this.
It still runs through my mind, thirty-five years later.
Image credits: Patrick-Parrish-7
#4
My Mom recently passed away suddenly, she had seen me off to a doctor's appointment 2 hours prior, and we had planned to have dinner on the large deck outside of her back door. It was one place she was comfortable and always enjoyed sitting outside to eat, she had been in the hospital a few times last year and for some reason, developed severe claustrophobia. We hadn't seen each other more than 10 times last year alone, even though we lived right next door. While Mom was in the hospital I had been in and out of hospitals and nursing homes for rehabilitation. Neither of us could walk very well at this point, so we weren't able to visit each other, until we were both home and spent several hours together sitting on the porch.
Within 20 minutes after coming home and having dinner made, my husband went over to tell my Mom dinner was ready, it was already too late. He ran back over to get me and try to help, but nothing could be done at this point, I sat down on the floor with her until the ambulance came. Thats one night I'll never forget for as long as I live.
While cleaning her home afterwards, there were too many notes to count, written in her own handwriting asking God to please let her go home. She had written that she wanted to be with my Dad and her body was in too much pain to go on another day. The notes, letters and poems were written over the course of years, although there were no dates, the writing gave it away. Some were tear-stained and found in various areas of her home. My Mom was and always will be the strongest woman I've ever had the honor of knowing, she never let on, not even once the thoughts that were going through her mind. She was our rock and gave us strength when needed, she'll always remembered that way, by everyone who knew her. A few years ago she made a bucket list, it was nearly complete, I think the night God took her home to be with my Dad, it was.
Thank you for letting me share my thoughts.. Sorry if there are spelling errors or the grammar isn't correct. I'm very disabled, in excruciating pain but trying my best, to get strong enough to walk a few steps on my own. Thanks for understanding.
Image credits: Shirl-Ginley-Morton
#5
My father joined the Navy in 1942 at the age of 17 and went to war on diesel submarines in the South Pacific. After WW2, he was assigned to duty in Japan as part of the occupational forces. There he met a local Japanese girl he wanted to marry, but it was prohibited to do so until the early ’50s when President Truman allowed it. Dad went back to Japan and married the girl he met during the occupation of Japan.
Dad was also involved in the atomic bomb tests in the South Pacific islands of Bikini Atoll in “Operation Crossroads.” Dad passed away in 1998, from lung cancer, and I submitted a claim to VA for a service-connected death and it was approved in record time. My mother lived until 2015. After mom passed away, my sister and I took our time to clean out our parents’ home. I stumbled on photos of my father with a young female child. There was nothing else associated with the picture. In my mother’s possessions were letters written in Japanese that we thought were from family members. During one trip to the house, there was a letter from Japan in the mail box. My sister decided to get the letter interpreted. To our surprise, the letter was from a Japanese woman who claims to be the daughter of my mother and father that he had during the occupation of Japan. The Japanese woman wanted to know why her mother hasn’t written her or responded to her phone calls. It was after this revelation that we decided to get all the letters mother had saved and get them interpreted. One of the letters had an email address so I used an app called Google Translate and wrote a letter to the Japanese woman. I learned that my mother and father had a child during the occupation of Japan in the late 1940s. This woman whose name was Terri had pictures to prove that she was a daughter of my parents. To my horror, Terri said our parents abandoned her because she lived with our mother until age 7 when dad returned to Japan and married our mother and brought her back to the USA. I learned that Terri was put up for adoption and the names of the birth parents were falsified thereby making it impossible for my parents to bring Terri back to the USA. Since my father was a career Navy Master Chief Petty Officer, he did not want the love child to hurt his career since fraternization during the occupation of Japan would result in a court martial. So, my parents made the decision not to adopt their real daughter and bring her back to the USA.
In my many Google Translate emails to Terri, I learned that our mother was one of six (6) children. Of the 6, two were female, mom and Terri (if Terri is her daughter, she can’t be her sister as well) and four (4) were boys who I was told were soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army and fought Americans in the South Pacific and all were killed. I learned that my mother was disowned by her family for marrying an America military man when her brothers died fighting Americans. I continue to write Terri and we are trying to organize a reunion but haven’t decided on when or where.
I would have never imagined that my parents had a love child while dad was involved in the occupation of Japan but short of a DNA test, I am convinced that Terri is my blood sister. To this day, my sister and I are amazed that our parents never told us that they had a daughter and abandoned her in Japan after WW2. I think that this story would make for a good book. This is something I have been wrestling with so I can get the money to have a reunion with my long-lost sister in Japan. This is a true story.
Image credits: It-s-Me-Terry-T
#6
In 2000, my maternal grandfather was in the hospital for what he thought were blood clots, it was discovered he had a fist-sized malignant tumor in his liver. Oncologist gave him a week or two to live, given he had already been hospitalized for a month and was beginning to suffer more extensive clotting with the risk of possible gangrene and amputation of his legs.
My grandfather had been a huge, portly man his whole life, easily 400 lbs. or more. He was in a box van and hit by a train in 1976 (not many rural crossings in Illinois at the time had lights or audio signals), and survived mainly on his bulk; he was thrown from the vehicle into a ditch, and all he had as a lasting reminder was a foot-long scar that ran down his inner thigh to his upper shin. The van wreckage made the papers, and looked as if a giant had twisted it into a grey, metal pretzel.
He begged my father to please let him go home, just for a day or so, rather than go directly to hospice. The hospital was unwilling to release him (he could not walk anymore), and the look on his face (me being the last one to see him alive) was one of anger and dismay.
When my father and I were going through his things, we found a loaded police revolver in his office desk. In all the time we’d known him, he was never known to own or use a firearm. We pretty much concluded that his goal was to go home and take his life rather than die slowly, but thankfully he passed away 12 hours before he was to go into hospice (48 hours after his cancer diagnosis).
My grandfather was one of the most jovial, positive, loving men I’ve ever known. He was more of a father to me in many ways than my own was, and was always ready with a song, with cash for me and my sister (he was a local champion pinochle player), which pretty much financed my home library for a decade. Thinking he was in despair like this at the end to contemplate suicide hurt more than his actual passing did.
Image credits: Michael-Cristel-1
#7
My mother had suffered with a bad heart for many years, after suffering two strokes when I was in my early teens. My wife and I were visiting a friend when my father called to tell me she’d had another and to go to the hospital. By the time we arrived, mum had died. My father, obviously, was distraught and in shock, so we wanted to take him home. However, he refused, wanting to return to his own house.
While my wife made him a cup of tea, I went upstairs to get his bed ready. I fluffed up my mother’s pillow (she had been in bed for a few days before passing), and found this:
Mum obviously knew she was about to die, so wrote us this last message:
To Bert and Paul,
If I should die tomorrow it would never mean goodbye, for I shall have left my heart with you, so don’t you ever cry.
This love that’s deep within me will reach you from the stars. You will feel it from the heavens and it will heal the scars.
I love you so, my dear ones, so try to do your best. Don’t turn away and close your mind, life’s portion is a test.
Mum
She died many years ago and this is the first time I’ve shared this with anyone other than my late father (he died a few years later) and wife. I have no idea whether she wrote this herself or remembered it from something she had read many years ago, but it remains precious to me. Bugger me, I do believe there are tears in these jaded old eyes of mine!
Never take those around you for granted. Our time here is much shorter than we realise.
Image credits: Paul-M-Calvert
#8
There are seven “Works of Mercy” that Catholics should do every chance they get. One of them is “bury the dead.” (Bonus points for you Catholic school graduates who remember the other six without looking them up.)
Burying the dead includes taking care of their final affairs, which includes cleaning out their possessions.
I’ve done this for three people now: a disabled teen I used to care for, my sister, and my step-grandfather.
When I cleaned out the teen’s room, I found some of his old casts. He had to sleep in body casts his entire life, and he had casts for his wrists and ankles that he wore since he was a toddler. Since he had cerebral palsy and couldn’t move on his own, the casts kept him straight and applied pressure so his joints would form as normally as possible. His father and I agreed that we should throw away the casts before his mother saw them, so I did just that. There was a house under construction nearby, and the crew there let me dump them in their dumpster.
My sister’s room… the very room she died in three days prior… had prescription pill bottles on every surface. There must have been 300 empty bottles in there. Her live-in boyfriend said there were some full bottles, but some of her fellow meth addict friends came in within hours of her death and took every pill they could find.
But what disturbed me most was what we found when we cleaned out my step-grandfather’s house. He lived by himself for the last 15 years of his life, in a small house in the middle of a field in rural Indiana. We’re talking “pump my own well water and burn my own trash” rural. He did have electricity, at least.
He was somewhat of a hoarder, and it took weeks to clean everything out of his house. Buried in his garage were two classic cars from the 1950s. When his children saw them, they remembered them from their childhood. They thought he got rid of them long ago, but he didn’t. He just buried them under years of crap he bought for no reason.
What disturbed me, though, were the mice droppings and nests we found EVERYWHERE. Some looked old, some looked new, but there wasn’t a room in that house that didn’t have at least one mouse nest. I wonder if he knew about them and didn’t care, or didn’t know what to do about them, or didn’t even know they were there.
That’s why I don’t want to live alone in my final years. I find it comforting to think that, statistically speaking, of everyone in my family, I’m likely the first to die. I don’t want to be that guy who lives by himself in a mouse-infested house for his final 15 years, too proud to ask for help.
Image credits: Matthew-Bates-27
#9
When my friend Richard (name changed) died, he had no surviving family of which we knew. Although I say “friend”, I didn’t really know him that well. He had been a tech on a couple of plays I’d been in.
Another actor I knew had gone out to do a wellness check on him and discovered his body. Apparently he’d had a heart attack while in the bathroom. He was found there.
Richard was best friends with a mutual friend. I called her when I heard. When I asked about a service, she explained that no one knew what to do, as he had no family.
I have written this many times: I’m a complete dolt about everyday life. However, I am great with emergencies or hard challenges.
So I started this odyssey of trying to figure out who to contact and how to get his body released. I ended up, with some help, being able to contact his cousins. His body was released & I arranged to have him cremated.
Before his cremation, which I attended alone, I brought a small bouquet of flowers to put in his coffin; I read some Shakespeare to him; and at the last minute snuck a cigarette in there as well; just in case. I think he would have appreciated that. We were smoking buddies, standing outside on break during many rehearsals.
Now. This process took almost two weeks. I was in his apartment twice. Once while trying to find info on any extended family; and once with police, to try and salvage some of his belongings before his apartment was condemned.
Richard was a hoarder.
Apparently he could throw nothing away. I mean nothing, including trash. I do not know how he survived his home. It was beyond hazardous. There was absolutely no open floor space. It was an obstacle course over objects to try and get from one point to the other.
He was a large man. I don’t understand how he didn’t constantly have a sprained ankle or broken leg. It was that bad.
Imagine a tornado hit your house. Inside. Add years worth of receipts and plastic bags, clothes, records, furniture, and stuff that belonged in the garbage, was strewn everywhere by this tornado. I had to look to find the bed. It was indistinguishable from the rest of the mess.
Under the bed were tied-off, white plastic deli bags of cigarette butts. He’d empty the ashtrays but couldn’t throw the bags of butts out.
It goes without saying, I guess, that the apartment had never been cleaned.
What was found that was even more of a surprise than the disastrous mess? Bank statements.
He had millions in his account.
He chose to live like that. Although choice may be the wrong word. I think it entirely possible he stayed there because if he moved, someone had to see the place. He probably couldn’t bear the idea of anyone knowing how he lived.
It somehow made it more awful to me, knowing he had money.
We are all prisoners of our own minds, to some extent. We tell ourselves stories about why or why not we can do something. More often, I bet, we tell ourselves why we can’t do something.
Richard’s mind kept him a prisoner in that dreadful place.
Being comfortable isn’t always…comfortable. I tell myself if I want to make a change, I’ve got to be willing to go through the initial discomfort.
Somehow I’ve made his apartment a metaphor for that.
Image credits: Elizabeth-Grey-26
#10
Growing up, I had an uncle who was the stereotypical guy who lives with his mom until she dies. He was a computer guy back in the early 90s, and lived on a couch during the day, and in bed at night. Never went anywhere, you know the type.
When I was around 10 years old, I stayed with my grandma while my mom went to the hospital to have my baby brother. I remember this uncle trying to take my clothes off in the middle of the night, but I fought against it, pretending to be sleeping. The next morning, I told my sister, who told my mom. My mother got super angry with me, and told me that he was just trying to make me comfortable, and the “schools are trying to make kids think uncles are perverts.” I was not to speak of it again.
Fast forward 30 years. Said uncle had a massive grand Mal seizure, and went into hospice. My 18 year old son and I were helping to clear out his house, when my son brought a picture to me from my uncle's bedroom. It was a picture of a little girl that my uncle had printed off of his computer. She wasn't wearing clothes, and looked terrified. I had found a school picture of the same girl in his livingroom. He died before any charges could be brought.
Every day, I live with the knowledge that I could have prevented this girl from her fate if I had just told someone other than my mom about him. I am sorry, little one! I wish I could go back and change it!
Image credits: Erin-Paxton-4
#11
My mother had been a widow for twelve years when she met met a lovely older gentleman while visiting me in Massachusetts. After their first date, she called to announce their engagement. I did all I could to maintain my composure, fearing that my 76 year old mom Rose had completely fallen off her rocker.
She never looked back, not even to her house in New Jersey, so it fell on my daughter and me to clear out four decades of possessions and sell it.
I went through each and every piece of paperwork, each drawer full of miscellany, every corner of the basement, for any family heirlooms, jewelry, photo albums, or the short list of personal items she wanted to start her new life.
On the last day before closing, I emptied out her night table and found a yellowed envelope from a doctor dated sometime in the 1940s. Inside was a brief handwritten letter about my dad, confirming that he had epilepsy and was not qualified for driving or the draft.
When my dad was asked about his exemption from the service, he always said it was because of flat feet.
When I asked why my dad never got a driver’s license, my mom always came up with some kind of reason or roundabout excuse which I now don't recall.
I mentioned the letter to my brother and he told me that one day, when he was a little boy, he saw our father rigid and unresponsive in his easy chair. He thought our dad was dead. My mother called the doctor and some kind of intervention ensued.
No mention was ever made to me, the older sister.
My father's condition was a dark family secret. The stigma attached to epilepsy was a burden on afflicted individuals in many ways—social ostracism, loss of work or custody of children, family embarrassment, personal shame, even medical ignorance prevailed. I’m sure that in historic times, victims were considered possessed by evil demons, and these were the cruel modern day vestiges.
Thankfully, my brother and I, and our children, did not show any signs or symptoms, even though epilepsy can run genetically in families.
I will never know if my dad told her during their ten month courtship.
My mother would not have told me to her dying day, she was so dedicated to protecting my father and our family from the consequences of disclosure.
I don't blame her, she had a burden to bear, making her a victim too.
POSTSCRIPT: After writing this piece, I contacted my first cousins. It turns out that my father’s sister had epilepsy too. She told her daughter that she and my father fell out of Grandpa’s truck and hit their heads when they were children, a family legend—actually, a cover-up—concocted and maintained to pretend that the epilepsy in our family never existed.
Image credits: Barrie-Levine
#12
My father passed away about 11 years ago. He spent 8 years in the Special Forces, a soldier in Vietnam. I had heard several stories from him. We were more friends that a father/son team. He was DEEPLY troubled. Severe alcoholic, raging pot head. A good man. Gentle, kind and smart, but the war, and pre-existing mental issues (depression, probably bipolar) destroyed him. He became ill one day, and literally, 1 day later he died. 54 years old. No surprise—case of beer a day, heavy cig smoker… In any case, I heard, I thought, his stories from the war. Anything I asked, he seemed to answer honestly. When he passed away, I was going through his few possessions. A large collection of pulp fiction (Doc Savage paper backs…), a lot of movies on VHS, other books. A couple guitars. Some clothes. Then, in the back of the closet, I found a box with some very old things in it. Among them, a photo album. In the album, their were extremely disturbing and graphic pictures from the war. I’m not kidding—shocking images, heads blown open, bodies charred with napalm. People posing next to scenes of utter devastation and death. Also, their were dozens of photos of a very attractive, young Asian girl (I say girl—my dad would have been maybe 19—this person couldn’t have been older than that). I mean, dozens of photos. Photos of them together, photos of her alone. Who was this girl? I had heard the stories of hitting brothels (very common in war time), and perhaps this person was simple that—a p********e. But I can’t imagine one would take these intimate photos if it was a simple financial agreement. Money for s*x.
I sent scans of the photos to a few of his military friends to see if they knew anything and nobody did.
I was initially pretty freaked out by the pictures of dead “g*#*#s” (I won’t use the slang—but using racial derogatory comments to describe the “enemy” is encouraged in war. Dehumanizing them makes them easier to k**l). It was a trophy of some sort? Why keep this? But I sort of get it. It’s not uncommon to keep war souveneirs.
But this beautiful young Asian woman. Presumably Vietnamese? Perhaps Thai? (from the stories of R and R in Bangkok).
Anyway, after seeing all this stuff, while i found it deeply troubling, it helped me to understand my father. As I said—an intelligent, kind, generous man. Deeply troubled, but a good man. And like thousands, perhaps millions of young men (and women), he was called on to do a very, very dark task. I suspect, as an 18 year old, he bought in to the story the government told him. At the time it seemed like a good idea.
It was just one of those things. He never explicitly told me about k**ling anyone. And I never directly asked. But seeing the evidence? You think you know someone, but their is an entire side you’ve never experienced.
In any case, After the shock wore off, I was able to see this with compassion. Good men and women on both sides, stuck in a terrible war. Too much death on all sides. How does an otherwise peaceful person make sense of it? I suspect the guilt of all this is what ultimately destroyed him. Sad stuff. And not uncommon. This s**t has happened since the human race started going to war.
Image credits: P-Chemist
#13
My father-in-law died at the age of 94. My mother-in-law had died 14 years before. My husband and I had to clean out his house. We found a huge scrapbook in the attic.
My husband had known since he was a teenager that his father had a long-running affair with another woman. My MIL knew this too and it was a source of continued tension in their marriage. My husband said sometimes my FIL would get a phone call from the “other woman”, drop everything and rush to see her. My husband had never forgiven his father for cheating on his mother with this woman. The “other woman” had died of cancer before my MIL passed. My FIL went to her funeral.
The scrapbook we found had been created and given to my FIL by the “other woman”. It contained over 100 items written by her about my FIL and their relationship. There were descriptions of things they had done together, how she felt about him, poetry about him, how she wished they could be together, how wonderful my FIL was, etc. The scrapbook pages were beautifully decorated and obviously had taken a lot of work. The scrapbook cover was a work of art by itself. There were dates on some of the pages, but not on the scrapbook as a whole.
We were flabbergasted by this scrapbook. My husband had 2 sisters. We never told them about this find. I don’t think the sisters knew about the other woman as much as my husband did. We didn’t know what to do with this scrapbook. Eventually we decided to return it to the other woman’s children even though we didn’t know how much drama this would cause. My husband knew their names and where they lived. So that’s what he did. We never heard anything back about what they thought of this scrapbook, but we sure thought it was weird.
Image credits: Nancy-Alar
#14
Disturbing / interesting. Depends how you look at it.
My grandfather was well, a young kid’s dream. He’d had a “good” war. He was a relatively senior officer in the Royal Artillery and was an ack-ack commander in Liverpool until D-Day preparation. He landed on D-Day. Eventually. His landing craft got stuck on a sandbank on a falling tide, so they had an enjoyable few hours with a grandstand view of the action before they actually hit the beach itself. He was never on speaking terms with the Royal Navy after that. And judging by the photograph he’d taken from the bridge of the ship I can understand.
He talked about his experiences, unlike my mother’s father who’d been a Japanese POW following the fall of Singapore.
To an impressionable couple of grandchildren, it was interesting and I suppose exciting. We were still to young to see war as utterly horrendous. It was an adventure.
Anyway, he encouraged us to learn to shoot; air rifles and pistols, bows and arrows etc all at a stupidly young age (it’s quite rare in the UK. No semi automatic rifles as your 12th birthday present). So that was all fun, until a friend came over with us one day and he shot with me with a .22 and I still have the pellet in my hand 35 years later.
Grandpa finally and very suddenly died, so my brother and i helped my parents to clear the house.
He’d always been into his guns and actually had a beautiful pair of Purdey shotguns, along with the air guns, a collection of knives and knuckle dusters and a walking stick that was also a sword and a walking stick that doubled as a small gauge shotgun. We reasoned it must have been In case “Jerry tried to have another bash”. He was on good terms with the local police so all seemed relatively in order. Well they knew where to come to if they needed armed back up.
It was only when we opened his large safe hidden away behind a cupboard full of booze that we found out exactly how prepared he was.
Apart from the circa 750 rounds of ammunition, ranging from 9mm to .50 inch (a couple of which I took into school…); there were 2 sten submachine guns, a couple of service revolvers, a semi automatic pistol, a German Luger and an MP44 Schmeisser.
I must say it was really quite impressive. Firstly, that he’d managed to stuff them all in the safe and secondly that in a whisky or gin induced moment of excitement (dependent on the time of day), he’d not decided to put on a small display.
For a British person, it was unusual to find such an arsenal behind numerous bottles of de Kuyper Cherry Brandy, Advocaat, Kirsch, Pflumli and various bottles of scotch (all in itself a bit of an arsenal).
Image credits: Wendlestone
#15
I had to go through my grandmother’s, mother’s and husband’s things when they died. I knew my grandmother had money and jewelry stashed in her house, but it appears her caretaker cleaned out the money before I was able to go look for it. I did finally find the jewelry. My mom had a small hoard of jewelry she’d probably bought on tv shopping channels, at least a few thousand dollars worth. It was my husband that gave me the biggest surprise when he passed in March 2018. If you don’t want to read the whole story, skip down to the paragraph with the arrows.
My husband and I met in an internet chatroom; he lived almost 3 hours from me. When we would visit, he drank a lot. His excuse: his mom stressed him out. She was in her 80s, had dementia and he was the main caregiver.
We went on vacation to Hawaii and he would make himself margaritas, get drunk and then want to nap. I was upset that his drinking caused us to spend a lot of time in the condo instead of out enjoying the vacation. When we returned, I asked him if he thought he had a drinking problem. He said “Maybe”. I told him that I had dealt with substance abuse, mental illness and abuse in my first marriage and would not be interested in continuing a relationship with someone who had an alcohol problem. I told him if he needed help, get it and I would be supportive. He agreed, but never followed through and I considered ending the relationship.
A few months later, he had a stroke. He had been diagnosed with high blood pressure 10 years before but never took meds. He was also diabetic, which was controllable with diet. He was told to stop drinking. Except for a few slip ups, he did not drink that I knew of and though I wasn’t much of a drinker anyway, I stopped drinking to be supportive.
Fast forward a few years, we got married, bought a house and he continued to commute weekly to his job and take care of his mom, coming home on weekends. 2 years later, he retired from his job and moved himself and mom to our home. I noticed sometimes when I got home from work, he seemed buzzed. I asked him about it, he said he had one beer. Once my car broke down and I needed a ride, he told me he’d had a beer and couldn’t drive. I had to pay the tow truck driver to take me home. Then I noticed he was prescribed meds for his diabetes, wasn’t taking them and he hadn’t told me. I told him his drinking was why he needed the pills and he needed to stop drinking if he didn’t want to take the meds. Then, I had to put something away in his closet and found a bottle of rum and diet soda. I dumped the booze and put the bottles in recycling. When he came home and saw them, he tried to hide them, not realizing I was the one that put them there. I told him if he didn’t stop, he could leave. He apologized, said I was right and would quit.
In January 2018 his mother passed away, complications of a broken hip. Then in March, he wasn’t feeling well. After a few days I told him to go to the doctor. He said if he wasn’t better in a week he’d go. I kept nagging him and he agreed he’d go the next morning after he showered and shaved. I left him in the bedroom watching tv. A few hours later I checked on him and he had pulled his cap over his face to take a nap. Later as I was getting ready for bed, I discovered he’d died. Autopsy discovered it was his heart; atherosclerosis. If he’d gone to the doctor, he’d probably still be alive. The alcohol, sneaked junk food and untreated hypertension finally took him.
>>>As I went through his things, I discovered more rum and soda in the closet. I realized he probably never quit drinking, he just couldn’t hide it as well once he retired and was home full time. I went through his personal papers and discovered he’d had 2 DUI’s in the 90s that he never told me about. If I’d known, I would never have married him. Sadly, his death probably saved me from future heartache dealing with the drinking.
Stubborn men, if you don’t feel well, don’t be brave; get checked.
Image credits: Julie-Andress-1
#16
Before I met my husband he lost everything in the crash of 2009. He had over 30 rental properties, all mortgaged to the max. His ex had left him and they lost their oceanfront mansion. All the rentals were lost too.
We met, and eventually married. He made enough to get by, downsized our life into a tiny apartment. We didn't have a lot but we had 2 old cars, a roof over our head and food in our tummies. Besides that we were happy.
Hubby worked a job he hated, but it paid the bills. I had a steady income from disability.
Hubby biggest pride had been showing his Dad his oceanfront mansion. He felt like he showed dad “See, I did good.”
Hubby paid cash for everything. He always had cash in his wallet.
Nothing about his dying was sadder to me than when I opened his wallet, which was left on the nightstand and it was empty. His pants pockets were empty. My poor husband who had always prided himself for being able to take care of those around him died without even $1 in his wallet or his pocket. It's been 5 years and I'm still sad to remember how this must have hurt him.
#17
Cleaning things out after my Mother passed away we found letters she wrote to each of us. She had Alzheimer’s and Parkinson's. The letters were incredibly sad, not because of what they said, but more how much she must have struggled to write these thoughtful good-byes. She wrote one for my Dad, one for each if her children, and a general one. Each letter had multiple crossed out words. She had literally cut up pieces of paper and taped them together to try to make a complete letter. My brother was serving in Afghanistan at the time. I xeroxed his and sent the copy to him, so it wouldn't get lost over there. My sister’s letter was the clearest. As the eldest child, I imagine my Mom wrote her letter first. All though the letters my Mother wrote were a heartfelt gift, looking at the pieces cut and taped together and how her beautiful writing virtually became unreadable, was very sad. She must have worked on them at night when she couldn't sleep. My Father did not know about them until he went through the lock box they had. When my Father passed away he left me (I was their caregiver) a beautiful poem. I treasure my Mother's letter and my Father’s poem. They tried so hard to be good parents. I was fortunate to spend their last years with them and be with them as they passed away. I look up to the stars every night and pray that somehow we are looking at the same stars. My Dad loved nature. On cloudy nights I laugh, because I know my Dad would have had some silly comment about the weather. ❤️❤️
#18
My grandfather was one of twelve siblings and he had three sisters who never married and stayed at the homestead their whole lives. As the last one of them died in the late 80’s we did clear out the house so my grandmother could move into it. What we found was a bit sad, a bit shocking and also an eye opener. Their basement was filled with shelves, they grew up in a time where every resource had to be protected and used and on the shelves we found jars of blueberry jam, carefully labeled. “ Blueberry jam, summer 1947” It was fourty years old, and they had kept it. In the attic we found something even more sadening. One of the girls had been engaged, for sixteen years. But the fiancee got tired of waiting and broke the engagement. Still she had kept everything she had prepared for the marriage, as it was custom to do. In a chest, carefully packed was her wedding gown, which she never had worn, eight embroidered sheets, twelve sets of towels, embroidered, eight sets of embroidered handkerchiefs and so on. An enormous amount of work had gone into that box, and it had all been for nothing. It does truly make one appreciate the good life we have, and treasure even the smallest things, for they are what makes the foundations of life itself.
#19
When my mum died, I was in a state of cold where, even turning over our apartment and rifling through her possessions, I felt absolutely nothing toward the stuff. If it weren’t for my grandma, I would’ve tossed everything out, because I just deemed everything useless at the time.
No father, and now, no mother. I didn’t really see the point of much of anything, so those few years passed in a blur of me not caring much what happened to me, and more often than not, contemplating suicide if I got too into my feelings.
I don’t feel like that now, thank God, but it still makes me shiver to think that, after a year of being a shell, and not remembering what happened that entire one year, I came out a simple upgrade of a lifeless husk. More so, in the sense that, I actually summed up the courage to makes people laugh and feel happy themselves, like I did for my mother when she was around, even thought my emotions were as shallow as a splash pool.
So, when I was going through the various assortment of diaries she had stashed away in drawers, and in between DVD’s, and sometimes, under the kitchen sink, I read them over. My only thought was that she must’ve been a very secretive woman to have so many diaries, and so many hiding places for them, when I hadn’t even seen one in my entire lifetime.
However, one diary I read made me feel, for lack of a better word, disturbed.
And that’s saying something: considering my inability to feel much of anything.
It was a diary I’d found somewhere near our old TV, squeezed right under the TV set and dusty from misuse. It was this faded black leather type diary, with a string you wind around it to tie it shut. Very old fashioned, and every like my mum.
I was expecting one of those weird tangent diaries she had, where she’d complain about inflation rates, my father disappointing me on more than one occasion, and her ridiculous work hours. What I found, was a relatively empty book. The pages were clean, but stank of old paper, but not a single page was filled with her scrawled handwriting.
It wasn’t until I flipped through the book more diligently, stubborn for something, anything, to bring me closure as to why she’d hide an apparently useless diary under the heavy as heck TV set.
I got to the few pages in the back, and I just kinda froze. Till this day, it doesn’t stop bothering me what if it could’ve meant. It was actually on that day that I was seriously considering k**ling myself. Just that morning, I’d written a lengthy s*****e note, apologising to my grandparents, and making my dad feel like a piece of crap in one paragraph about all the dates he missed, and the messages he left on read.
Take into a account, my mum died of some progressive form of asthma, meaning she slowly got weaker and weaker, then passed on in hospital, and didn’t just abruptly leave my life like in a car accident or something. No matter how many times I’ve turned it over in my head, I just can’t seem to figure out how that what she wrote could’ve applied to me in a logical sense. Was it something random? A sign? Some type of glitch in the matrix or something? A freaking warning to herself that I just blew out of proportion?
Honestly, who knows.. All I know is that I didn’t kill myself that day. No, I was too busy worrying about what the message at the back of that diary could’ve meant.
Cause, just a few pages from the soft cover of the book, was a rushed scrawling of letters. In her black, jagged, handwriting:
“Don’t do it!”
I swear, it still leaves me rattled as hell. Needless to say, I didn’t tell anyone about it. I just silently stood up, walked out the house, into the car, and demanded we went to a therapy session the next day.
Whatever that message was, I’m grateful for it. So, thanks Mum. I probably would’ve made a grave mistake, otherwise.
#20
I lost my mother last October (2017) to colorectal cancer. “Suspected” colorectal cancer according to the Death Certificate.
I live 300 miles away from the home that I grew up in, near Glasgow, Scotland. A huge chunk of 2017 was consumed with dashes 300 miles North in an effort to support her through her illness as much as humanly possible whilst maintaining some semblance of family life and employment at my new home in Derby, England.
Following my mothers departure in October, my eldest sister, nephew and I organised a family reunion - of sorts - at my mothers house over the Christmas period to collectively empty the house in preparation for sale.
My mother was 70 years old when she died. She was never a particularly organised or systematic person in life. If anything, she could be thought of as a hoarder although not to the extremes that would warrant a C4 Documentary.
We sifted through all of her belongings, taking anything of reasonable condition and value to the local charity shops, disposing of the unsalvageable at the local council recycling centre and saving the odd trinket or two for ourselves.
There were boxes upon boxes of folders and paperwork. An entire room in the house had been dedicated to paperwork and admin storage. Much of it out of date and no longer relevant … I guess she couldn't bring herself to dispose of it.
I found nothing disturbing in my mothers possession but something which saddened me greatly.
Amongst the remnants of her 70 years possessions; we found a drawer full of batteries, a drawer full of torches and a drawer full of old mobile phones. We also found at least half a dozen bowel cancer screening kits. All of them addressed to her and none of them opened or responded to.
Her Oncologist suspected that the cancer had been undetected for up to 10 years based on its size and progression upon discovery. Some of the screening kits had letters accompanying the kit … some dated more than 10 years previous.
I’m not absolutely sure that discovering the cancer earlier would have lead to a better outcome … but maybe.
#21
After my best friend Patrick killed himself at my house, I took on the responsibility of dealing with his belongings.
His Mom was elderly and didnt want to do it. She ended up giving me everything he owned, including the laptop he had in the Jeep with him that night when he attached a vaccum hose to his exhaust pipe and ran it through a small opening of the window.
I was scared to turn the laptop on, really not sure if it would work or not because the saturation inside the vehicle was immense, there were literally drops of water dripping above Patrick…he had plastic containers in the back of the jeep that were a quarter of the way full of water. It was crazy.
So the laptop started up fine but I could barely stand the smell of exhaust, it smelled bad everytime I started it for a year after that.
On his Windows desktop was
