Article created by: Rūta Zumbrickaitė
Some folks would say you don’t really know someone until you live with them, but sometimes you don’t really know someone until you bury them. Death has a strange way of pulling skeletons out of closets – just when you’re trying to come to terms with losing a loved one, life throws in a little surprise.
The internet recently lit up when a Redditor asked folks who lost someone close if they discovered any secrets after their death. And the answers are equal parts shocking, heartwarming, and straight out of a crime doc.
More info: Reddit
Ray and Ann passed away 3 hours apart, in different facilities. Ann first; then Ray.
Since Ray was the last one living, they contacted his next of kin which was my mom. She got a call from a lawyer and was scared to call him back because she thought they were going to make her pay for the funerals. Lawyer says no, no, you just need to come in and talk to me.
Stacks and stacks of CDs and bonds, laundry basket filled with cash (covered in clothes), cash rolled up under kitchen sink, some here, some there.. Multiple bank accounts.. Ended up being close to $2mil.
The only bill my mom had to pay in Ray’s name after he passed was his electric bill.. $37.
I grew up thinking my family was well off. I always had brand name clothes and nice holiday presents and my mom drove me to lots of out of town school events without being concerned about gas.
When she died, I learned she had left behind a great deal of credit card debt. We actually weren’t doing that great financially, but she wanted so badly for me to fit in, so she gave me everything other kids had, even if she couldn’t afford it. I found one of her last journals that said how badly she wanted for me to be accepted. I still wasn’t, but I appreciate her effort. I wish I could thank her for trying.
My great grandfather lived with me since I was born, I pretty much knew everything about him but after he died I learned a few interesting stories. One was how back in the 50s, he used to be a raging alcoholic, and went out partying all the time, then one day he woke up and found my great grandma beaten almost to a pulp, he asked who did it, it turned out he did in a drunken fit. After that he quit drinking cold turkey, the only time he ever drank afterwards was my uncle’s wedding in 1986 and his 75th birthday in 2005.
My great, great-grandmother met my great, great-grandfather on Ellis Island when immigrating to the U.S.. She was 16 and he was 17, or so everyone believed. When she died just after her alleged 97th birthday, my family discovered from immigration logs she was actually 100, and had lied about her age because it wouldn’t have been acceptable in society to a) be single at 19 and b) marry a younger man.
When my grandpa died I found out that he had 11 kids from a previous marriage. None of his grandkids knew, but I guess everyone else kept it hush hush until the funeral. Glad I have a place to crash in in France now.
My grandfather. He saved pennies. All the pennies.
We found over $2000 in his basement crawlspace. In pennies.
Fortunately, he also was very meticulous about rolling them, though in his old age, he didn’t roll them as often. There was maybe $300 or $400 of unrolled pennies, but the rest were thankfully rolled.
When my grandpa died he had changed his will to include myself and my siblings, putting the money in a college fund to be split equally. My grandpa never helped my mom go to college because he didn’t think it was a woman’s place to get higher education. My mom still remained in contact with him even though it upset her and before he died he said how much he was proud of her for everything she had done. His college fund he left for my siblings and I included an equal portion for my sister.
After my dad passed I found out he had run a flamethrower for three months digging the Japanese out of the caves in the Philippines.
My dad didn’t talk about the war much. He never mentioned this part. Found out from mom he had terrible nightmares all his life about it.
Found out my grandfather was gay 2 years after he died. His wife (my grandmother) was in total denial that he had been cheating on her with other men for all 50 years they were married. She finally admitted that it was AIDS he died of, not a random illness.
My grandfather used mob “loan” money to start his business. Found this out when a retired mobster showed up at his funeral reception.
Edit: I know he at least laundered and/or hid money; besides that, I don’t know. His brother also had a very successful real estate business. Their parents (my great grandparents) had a small farm; they did not come from any money.
It was the Italian mob in the Bay Area.
My father, in the late 50’s, helped rob a bank in New York. He drove the get away car.
He did the full 5 years he was sentenced to because every time he got asked about the guys he worked with he said nothing.
After my husband’s grandmother passed away in Jan, they found a photo from the 1940s of a handsome man in uniform amongst her things: the back read something along the lines of “With my deepest love and devotion, Terry”. But it wasnt her husband (who she was married to during the war) and no one had ever heard her mention him before. He must’ve meant something to her, to hold on to that photo for 70 plus years.
A family friend, almost an uncle and next door neighbor. We saw this family everyday, their kids and us were inseparable. He worked as a salesman and traveled quite frequently. He died unexpectedly one day of a heart attack. At his funeral, his other family shows up. He had another wife and kids in another part of the country the whole time. Nobody knew.
A couple of years after my grandfather died, I found out that he worked for NASA/ICBM program during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Apparently he was taken away during the crisis in an unmarked car right when it first started. He wasn’t allowed to talk about where he went and who he was with.
Also, when he was being looked at for this job, the FBI or CIA like stalked him for over half a year to make sure he wasn’t a bad seed. But one day, his neighbors across the street called the cops on said FBI or CIA agents because they have been parked outside her house for like a month. My father said that the altercations between the cops and agents was pretty funny and awkward.
I wasn’t particularly close with my grandfather, I was young when he died, but as he was well… dying, he had to have a breathing tube put in. After he died, the doctors presented my grandmother with his false teeth.
Apparently, when he was 21, as a birthday present, his father had taken him to the dentist to have all his teeth pulled and have false ones put in. No one knew, including his wife and all his kids. Apparently this was common practice.
I found out my beloved great grandfather was, um… “friendly” with his daughters… It changed the way I looked at my entire family.
My grandfather passed a few years ago. My mother and I have been working on our ancestry and we found out that my grandfather ran booze in Far Rockaway Beach with every big name booze runner in New York during prohibition. We always knew my grandfather had a past drinking problem and couldn’t ever touch the stuff again but he never spoke about how or why he developed the problem.
That my mom had a brother. My uncle was the black sheep of the family, ran away after high school, in and out of prison his whole life, you get the idea.
Not a shocking one but my aunt died when she was 18, she’d been smoking since she was 11/12 and my Grandma only found out when she went to collect her stuff from the hospital. We used to come up with the dumbest excuses to get away and smoke I don’t know how she never realised.
I work at a TV station. I had a co-worker — a producer and reporter — who absolutely loved Oprah and everything Oprah-related. After she passed, I found out she was actually working part-time at Harpo on the weekends the whole time, but told almost nobody here because she didn’t want anyone to think she didn’t care as much for us.
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