People don’t like to think about death. It’s something far away in the distance, we tell ourselves, something that happens to others who are a lifetime away from where we are.
It’s only when death comes close to us — when someone close to us gets sick, or even worse, passes away — that everything changes. We suddenly realize how fragile life is, and how finite time is.
But sometimes, we discover a bit more. Whether it’s a deathbed confession or people just piecing information together, we learn something new about the one who has passed away, too. Truth has a tendency to come out.
There’s a discussion on Reddit that has platform users sharing the shocking secrets they discovered about their loved ones only after their death, and it serves as a grim reminder, that you can never truly know a person.
#1
I was kicked out at 16, my best friends mother took me in as her own, she died yesterday, my best friend sent me a picture of her photo album titled, “my sons” and it was just pictures of my best friend and me. It’s been a pretty emotional last 24 hours.
Image credits: Iian8787
#2
My maternal grandmother we found after she had passed was using 10% of her income to sponsor unfortunate kids all over the world. She had been doing it for the last 40 years of her life nonstop. We found letters of her giving those kids advice, and then keeping in contact with them pretty much their whole lives. She received pictures of them growing up, and having families.
Essentially, my grandmother had far more than 5 kids She helped to raise, and more grandchildren and great grandchildren than we ever knew. Most of the kids she sponsored were orphans. We spent the next several months after her death getting in touch with all these people. Some managed to attend her funeral, some to this day made a trip to where we spread her ashes, and sent us photos of them there.
We knew she was a saint to us, but we didn’t know she was a Saint to hundreds of children spanning 4 decades.
Image credits: sicurri
#3
My grandpa was a preacher in a little town in south Carolina in like the early 50s. He preached at the white church most of the month and would go preach at the black church once a month to give their preacher a break. He struck up a friendship with one of the guys at that church and eventually wore the guy down enough that he came to the white church for a visit. See, Grandpa had never experienced these people as being anything less than totally welcoming and he thought they all believed as he did, that *everyone* is a child of God and welcome in church, no matter who they were.
So, the poor guy comes in and is made to sit in the very last row and is totally ignored. They wouldn’t even bring communion to him. Grandpa got down from the pulpit, ripped the communion stuff out of someone’s hands, and took it to his friend himself. Then, he got back up at the outfit and yelled at everyone about how God loves everyone equally and doesn’t differentiate based on color and made quite a stink. There was a cross burning on his lawn that night. He had little kids and a wife to take care of so he couldn’t fight the way he wanted to. Two weeks later he moved back to his hometown in Texas, where they accepted Grandpa and his beliefs in people’s equality much more readily.
WHY I wasn’t told about this before Grandpa died, I’ll never know. He was a class act from beginning to end. What every Christian is supposed to be and so few manage.
Image credits: GreenOnionCrusader
#4
My grandfather was a bank executive at a small bank in a farm town in Arkansas. After his death my mother found a ledger in his safety deposit box. He made loans to people the bank had denied due to background, type of employment and/or skin color. He made the loans from his own pocket. Most of the loans were between $200 to $500. He charged a nominal percentage rate and everything he earned in interest he donated to the church. My grandmother had no idea and was heartwarmed when she found out. He died in 1972.
Image credits: username987654321a
#5
This is real mushy but my dad died when I was just very tiny. I never knew him. Recently, I decided I’d read all the letters he’d written my mom while he was in the navy. He mentioned me in every single one. We had quite a lot in common. We both love Bob Dylan, the way we talk about ice cream, just little things like that. Big things to me, though
Image credits: kristyn69
#6
My maternal grandmother was a con artist and lived life on the run since she was 21 years old. I have since uncovered 7 different marriage certificates around different states, marrying different men, and I suppose funding her lifestyle. I also believe she abducted my mother from a hospital as we’ve found her real birth mother now, aged 91. It’s an insane story I’ve uncovered.
Image credits: YUHMTX
#7
That he was a millionaire and he set aside the money to pay for my kids to go to private school. Thanks, Uncle.
Image credits: thelibrariangirl
#8
That my grandmother lied about all her recipes
I used to ask for copies of recipes of my favorites but I could never make it taste right. I’d cook things with her that when I did it with her helping never tasted right. Always got the “oh don’t worry, it takes practice”. Thought I was just a terrible cook for years. When clearing out her home after she passed away recently, my dad found a secret stash of recipes very well hidden. Turns out all the “copies” she wrote for us were wrong, deliberately. I’m 43 and just started making these recipes again off her secret stash recipes and wouldn’t you know, I can make them so they taste they way they should.
Image credits: eczblack
#9
For context: I’m a hairstylist and don’t have a good relationship with my sister-in-law at all. Anyway, she would always come to get services done by me while I went to cosmetology school, like lashes, haircuts, and color services. She would tip VERY generously, which I found odd, considering she was also very frugal with her money. Cut to my last few weeks of school, she stopped tipping completely, even after doing four-hour services on her. Nada. Well, it turns out that my mom (who passed away in September) had been giving her money to give to me as a tip. I cried when I realized that too late to thank my mom.
Image credits: sweetmeggypoo
#10
My Grandfather died almost 2 years ago. He suffered from Parkinson’s for 15 years and that lead to other health issues. In his last few years his cognitive abilities were very compromised. In a brief moment of clarity though he wrote a long note for my Grandma. It was a collection of memories from the time they got married, purchased a ranch, had children and other life moments. It was very sweet and so precious. He didn’t give it to my Grandma, so she discovered it many months after his passing.
Image credits: SpaceGoonie
#11
My mom was a private music teacher and after she died we went through her books. It turns out half of her clients were ‘on scholarship’, i.e., not paying at all. They just got free lessons for years. She was a saint and didn’t tell a soul.
Image credits: iamterrifiedofyou
#12
Oh ok I got this one
My mom’s late boyfriend. Really great guy. Colon cancer and passed at age 54. He was a lifelong firefighter after the army. He joked all the time about being a spy in Vietnam. Always joked about having a third degree black belt. Just on and on
You never knew if you could take him seriously
So he passed. Sad times of course. I help mom clean out his house. We find his old war chest from the Spanish American War. Was passed down
Opened it up and god damn…I start finding all sorts of papers marked Top Secret. All sorts of coded messages. I could make out bits of things but it was in verbiage I didn’t understand
And hey look there is a black belt that is rather old
He wasn’t lying the whole time
Image credits: DaniTheLovebug
#13
Grandma was a closeted lesbian. When we were going through her house after she passed we found a lot of lesbian paraphernalia. I thought it was hilarious.
Image credits: otherm0ther
#14
My dad died in 1988. He was a smart man; a qualified engineer who worked for Lucas, Lotus and Fafnir during his career.
During my childhood in the ’70s I, like most little boys of that era, was fascinated by space, rockets and astronauts and dad always encouraged my interest. He’d buy me books and toys that were space related, and would talk about spacey things with me for hours on end. With his help I turned into such a space nerd that in my first year of secondary school (US: 6th grade), when we each had to give a 5-minute talk during English about a topic we were passionate about, I talked for over 30 minutes about the stellar life cycle.
I found out only a few years ago from mum that he believed that the Moon landings were a hoax.
My brain literally stalled; I was speechless and couldn’t process it.
Image credits: xilog
#15
My grandmother was a mafia mistress and my dad was the product of an affair with a married man and not the man who raised him. Also found out the the string of really bad luck she had in the 60s was actually that man trying to get rid of her because she went full Glen Close in Fatal Attraction crazy on him when he tried to break off the affair.
We met our long lost family after I took a dna test and we are afraid of them.
Image credits: anonymousemployee20
#16
My mother comes from a wealthy Sicilian landowning family. When she got together with my father, a penniless half-Calabrian, her family did everything to make this union end.
They offered him money, a good job but he always refused. My grandmother then decided to pay a local gang to beat and threaten my father that if he did not leave my mother, they would kill him and feed his corpse to the pigs. Just before this happened my mother announced that she was pregnant with me so they were forced to marry before I was born.I found this out recently when my grandma’s sister passed away. My cousin, reading the correspondence she had with my grandmother, found the letter explaining all this and sent a copy to me.
This is a picture of my mom, nonna and dad at their wedding. Look how happy she is!
Image credits: Roper997
#17
My dad was a car salesman when he was alive, however when he died, I learned that he was actually a drug trafficker and transported drugs all over the country in the cars that he was transporting and selling.
Image credits: panDora_Da_explorer
#18
Uncle Ingram was apparently a sperm donor back in the 1950s. New cousins pop up on 23andme every couple of years.
Image credits: Vampilton
#19
Grandma was a Russian spy in the Cold War. Wild.
Image credits: almost_queen
#20
After my dad passed away, my family decided it was finally time to clean out the attic. My dad would keep everything from old TVs to old tax documents from when he owned a business. I came across a box that was really heavy. I opened the box and saw a bunch of paperwork, and on the top said ‘(My Dad’s Name) vs. The United States of America’. That’s when I learned my dad was in federal prison back in the ’70s for import fraud, and that he had a lot of ties to the mafia.
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