Losing a loved one is never easy, and by far, going through their things is one of the strangest parts of the grieving process. In some cases the morbid cleaning job turns into a weep fest as you come across sentimental objects and letters that signal how much love they had.
In other cases, looking through the belongings of a loved one reveals secrets they kept from everyone during their life. This of course, elicits a lot of questions that are mostly unanswerable since they're gone.
In a popular Reddit thread, people shared the most surprising things they found when going through their dead loved one's belongings.
1. From theb*tchycoworker:
Lost my dad last year. I was very surprised at how many sentimental things he kept. He wasn't a total hard ass, but I never thought of him as sentimental. He still had a letter his mother had written to him when he joined the Navy, some toys/trinkets that I gave him when I was a child.
2. From RaedwaldRex:
A handwritten letter from the then King of Jordan. My grandad found it during world war 2, kept it in a keepsakes box along with old ration books and his dead wife's driving license.
3. From ldshimek:
My husband passed last July. I was going through his accordion file where he put all of his important papers trying to find his car title. I found an envelope that I had written my name and number on the first day we met. He kept it in his accordion file under “very important documents” this whole time. It made me cry.
Edit: Thank you for all your kind words and well wishes. You all have no idea how much this has helped me feel like I’m not alone, especially right now during quarantine. I am so happy to share a piece of our lives with you wonderful people.
4. From LilMeemz:
My Baba (grandmother) lost her dominant/right hand as a young woman. We found a box of letters she had written to practice adjusting to using her left hand. What was most interesting to me was that her handwriting was almost identical between the two, with very little adjustment.
5. From Angel12279:
Perhaps not crazy but it was somewhat surprising.
My grandfather wasn't really in our lives, he was abusive towards our grandmother and when they divorced he moved across the country and became a truck driver.
Growing up my mother never really saw him and the one time she did he was sober but admitted his dry humor made it hard to talk to him. However when my sister and I were born she put an effort to send him pictures and Christmas cards.
Throughout his life he never talked to her or reached out and assumed he just never cared and we were on better relations with his brother anyway.
However, in October of 2018 he ended up passing away and my mother came up to help his grieving brother sort through my grandfather's things. She ended up finding every wall covered in our baby photos and cards we sent him through out the years along with the few our aunts and uncles sent him.
My mother became so heartbroken because throughout her entire life she assumed he hated his past or just disliked us but he probably just didn't know exactly how to interact with us.
6. From xoxomaxine:
When my grandma passed away in the late 2000’s, we were cleaning out her house and found a large glass jar full of quarters. Each coin had a white label on it with her handwriting.
One of the coins was a 1972 quarter. “Aug. 5, 1972 - arrived to the US” was written on the label.
She had saved a quarter with the year of every single milestone since they came to the US. The date they bought their home, when they bought their first car, when she got her first dog. My aunt has the collection now.
7. From rdhd247:
When my grandfather passed, we found in a box hidden in an old closet all the love letters my grandmother and him exchanged before they got married. I'm glad we found them.
8. From HyperEnemy:
My mom died from cancer when I was 15, I'm now 19 and one of my sisters just gave me my mom's journal. My older sister had to hide it cause she was afraid my dad would take it and never let us see it.
Its been so nice to be able to read it. I never thought I would get too feel this close to her again :)
9. From RIII-XStitch-NHBS:
My friend's mum died about seven years ago and as my friend is an only child I thought it would be nice to help her clear out her mum's place. The mum was a bit of a hoarder and was in her early 80s when she died. Fortunately, my friend was out of the room when I found a jar with 40-year-old spermicide in it while going through an old trunk.
I knew it was that old as the woman was divorced in her 40s and never got over the failed marriage, plus you don't really need birth control of that nature in your 50s, etc. It was in a glass container and had separated into layers. I quickly tossed it into the garbage bag before my friend came back in and never told her.
10. From Gibbie42:
When my mother helped clean out her 80 odd year old long widowed aunt's house, she found condoms and gold lame stockings.
11. From tzlm:
I live in eastern Europe and my grandma was in concentration camp as a child. After she passed away, we were cleaning here apartment and we have found crazy amounts of dry food hidden, tons of sugar, pasta, rice etc. Decades after the war and camp she was still preparing for famine striking one day. It was the saddest thing to find.
12. From aventurinesoul:
Maybe not so much of a surprise per se but the closet in my mother’s old room was completely full of plastic grocery bags that grandma had been saving.
My mom made a braided rug with them as a gag gift and it’s still around.
The bigger surprise was how much of their wealth had been donated to charities. They lived such a simple life you’d never know they had that amount of money to begin with.
13. From teasus_spiced:
A bit of background first. Since I was very young my father lived half way across the world and my mother didn't let him see me. She also got together with a psychopath who hated me. My childhood was truly terrible, to the extent that I was suicidal before my age was in double digits. My two grandmothers were a total lifeline, and without them I really don't think I'd be alive. I was put into a children's home when I was 14.
When my maternal Grandmother died, my Uncle found a folder with my name on it. Inside were letters between her and my other Grandmother. They were conspiring to make sure that I had at least some positivity in my life, and arranging with each other about who would invite me to stay with them next. Those letters were truly beautiful.
There was also a watch, given to her by Saddam Hussein, but we knew about that. She was an interesting woman!
14. From kmartfreak:
For some reason, my Great Aunt had the pocket-sized New Testament my grandfather took to WW2. When I opened it up, his dog tags fell out, and his next of kin listed was a woman who wasn't my grandmother. I found out that day he was married once before, and I was shocked.
15. From butiwantthisusername:
Lost my mate at 13, grew up with her, I even lived with as a kid when my mum and brothers were homeless. Anyway her room is still the same, a year or so later and me and her younger sister where looking through her artwork and found Christmas cards. She died just before Christmas and you don't think of things like that.
16. From CosmicMaiden:
My oldest uncle killed himself years ago. He was depressed, paranoid and mentally ill. When my mom (his sister) went to his home, she found multiple dictionaries in different languages. He was working like park guardian in Paris, and so he learned a lot of languages to help people. He even had a complete collection of all Alexandre Dumas' books. He may have been terribly alone all his life, driving him totally crazy. But I assume he also traveled all around the world, and in time, in his mind.
May he found peace.
17. From imunclebubba:
My grandfather had major heart problems most of his life. Had to take nitro on the regular and his case was written about in a medical journal. The doctors told him that he should quit drinking 100% however that a "nip" here and there wouldn't hurt him. After he passed away while we were renovating the spare bathroom for my grandmother we found a hole in the floor underneath the bathroom vanity.
Within this hole was wooden cylinder with a lid that my grandfather had made. In it was a bottle of whiskey and written on the inside of the lid was a reminder that my grandfather wrote. "Remember, Just a Nip, unless it's a hard day then take 2". Grandma knew nothing of it, we all thought that grandpa had quit drinking entirely after he was told to stop.
18. From HelmutMelmoth:
I found a really spooky diary at my great aunt’s house. It had entries like “I murdered the neighbour just now”, and “Your mother was the victim today”. Needless to say my wee aunt is unlikely to have murdered anyone (or to have been so nonchalant about it), so it must be code for something, but for what?
19. From returningvideotapes2:
When my grandfather died we found three separate briefcases in his loft.
Briefcase 1: around 20k in it
Briefcase 2: around 50k in it
Briefcase 3: documentation and photo ID for different names but my grandfather’s face.
My dad and uncle finished the clear out process by themselves and have never told me if they found anything else or what they did with the briefcases
20. From SpiritofaTrafficJam:
I helped an ex girlfriend (well, ex fiancee, but yeah), clean out her stepdad's house in the early 1990s after he passed away suddenly. This is the man she considered her father - he and her mom married when she was very young (never knew her bio dad), and he was the most amazing husband and father. He never treated her differently than the kids he and her mom had later, and doted on her mother, only to be shattered by her passing about 5 years before.
We went to his house with her siblings and their significant others to sort things out. She and I were in his "hobby room" full of radios, small electric motors, model trains...that sort of thing when her younger sister came running down the stairs.
She had been in the "guest" room and found boxes of dildos, light bondage gear, leather straps....and a photo album. The photo album was full of pictures of himself and his wife at swinger parties, bondage parties, photos of people she knew as "aunts" and "uncles" in various states of undress with plates of what we assumed to be cocaine. Most of the photos were from the mid 70s to mid 80s. She was born in the late 1960s, and her siblings all around the times of the photos....
That was a fun day.