When a person passes away, at some point it is necessary for a family member to go through all of his or her personal belongings in order to divide them up among the remaining family members.
I think it is safe to assume that most people have personal interests/fetishes that they prefer keep to themselves, only disclosing it to others when necessary. If the person’s death was expected, it’s quite possible that they may have thrown out some personal items in anticipation of their relatives rummaging around their bedroom after their death.
But if their demise came suddenly or unexpectedly, they most likely would not have thrown out anything. In such cases, the next-of-kin would have the opportunity to see a side of them that most people never get to see.
What interesting or unusual items have you found in your deceased relatives’ personal belongings? Are there any items you would like to have but you don’t because you are concerned that your family will find it after you die??
A little over a year ago, my best friend was killed in a car accident. I volunteered to help her mother go through her apartment and pack up everything, along with a few of our other friends.
Because we knew the story behind it, we were able to explain to her mother that the trunk full of pornography did not belong to her, she was holding it for ransom from a friend who owed her back rent on an apartment they’d shared. Meg’s mother is not the type to be horrified or pass judgement on anybody, she probably wouldn’t have given a damn if the porn had belonged to her daughter. But that got me thinking about what my mother would find if she, gods forbid, had to pack up my apartment.
That night, when we’d finished the apartment and were winding down over dinner, I told my friends exactly where I keep all the things I don’t want my mother to find (the “essential tools” of a single woman, diaries, assorted erotica I’ve accumulated over the years, etc.) and gave them explicit instructions to dispose of them in the event of my death.
I have every confidence that should the worst happen, my friends could save my mother the unbelievable embarrassment of finding her recently-deceased daughter’s vibrator.
I guess it wasn’t really unusual, but it was touching, when my grandmother died, we went through some old papers she had. Birth certificates, formal paperwork, that kind of thing, but it also contained some folded newspapers. Upon examination, these were every newspaper that had an article about the death of her other son, who died in the early seventies as a teenager. That she had carried these for two moves across the country, and for so many years… It was a real display to me of just how much parents care for their children, I guess.
We also found tons and tons of Saran wrap, and wax paper. Like a dozen unopened boxes. Tons of clothes with tags still on them. No one else in my family is a shopper, so it seemed strange.
When my grandfather died, I requested one thing of his- a book of poetry he kept by his bedside durring his declining months. He has sparked in me from an early age a love of literature and of learning that stays with me even now.
His wife, my grandmother, preceeded his death by almost seven years, but there was not a day that went by that he did not think lovingly of her.
When I received the book, I thumbed through it and found he had made notations next to some of the poetry, comparing it to other literary sources. I found this fascinating and read it for some time. Then I came to the end of the book. Tucked in the back flap of the dust cover was a folded sheet of paper, containing a sweet romantic poem my grandfather had written in memory of my grandmother. Damn thing made me cry. I keep it right where I found it, in the book. It’s a hell of a reminder of them both.
When one of my wife’s aunts passed away several years ago, she was helping to go through her belongings and sort them out. This woman was the type who could never bear to throw anything away. She found a ziplock bag filled with pieces of string which had been cut from various packages, and neatly labelled “String – too short to use.”
My dad and I were going through some papers looking for something unrelated, and we found a little hand-written valentine from my mom to my dad in their first year of marriage. It was just so sweet…
My mom and her sisters found a shriveled up old carrot in my grandfather’s sock drawer. The really weird thing is that we still have it, this year it’s my turn to keep it.
My great uncle was an avid amateur photographer and had zillions of slides. Somehow they were all sent to me after he passed away and I decided to go through all of the trays and boxes a few years ago. In one box was dozens of slides of my great aunt; for over thirty years he’d snuck candid pictures of her and compiled them into a sort of secret album. What I found so sweet was that the box was labeled Beautiful, Beautiful.
I also have the baby teeth of our family’s first dog. But that’s not weird.
My grandmother died about seven years ago. While clearing out her house, we discovered several things of interest.
A lock of my father’s hair. Not that he isn’t still alive. It’s just that it’s been so many years since my dad actually had enough hair on his head to comprise a lock.
An extremely eloquent love poem written to my grandmother by my grandfather. What makes this interesting is that he had no more than a third grade education. His brother is still alive at the age of 94 years, and has never learned to read (not for lack of intelligence, though).
Every letter/postcard my father had sent his mother over the course of 35 years. Which was quite a few.
Not too long ago my mother-in-law sold her parents’ house, and I helped clean it out. On the intersting side was the photo album dating back to Pearl Harbor in 1940-41. Then I found a polaroid photo that the husband had taken of the wife in the shower. Unfortunately, wife was considerably less photogenic in that picture than she had been in 1940.
My cousin was fifteen years old when he died. When my aunt finally worked up to cleaning out his stuff, she found that he had stashes of candy (different kinds) everywhere. In his locker. In his sock drawer. In his backpack. In his bedside table.
Not that strange, I guess, but she was just astonished that he had been able to keep this little quirk a secret from her.
(BTW…my cousin wasn’t overweight or anything like that. He was an athlete…very healthy. And a damn good kid.)
My uncle died on February 1st and I helped my dad clean out his house one afternoon. We found an unopened box of Kleenax from the 70’s and a playbill for a college play he saw in 1968.
After Dad died, we found a hand grenade in the workshop. Yep, a Japanese grenade from WWII, a souvenir from the war.
Few other phrases get a 911 operator’s attention like “we’ve got a grenade” does. The cops were there in seconds and we all waited an hour for a bomb squad guy to drive up, drop the thing in the trunk of his car and drive off. I wish that I could have defused it; it would have made a great hammer.
When my brother died back in 2002, (he was 15 at the time) I went through everything in the room, going through his possessions, etc.
The one thing that amused me, and still does, was that his friend and I found, easily, 15 empty bottles of hand lotion under his bed. Even under the circumstances we found them, his friend and I couldn’t help but laugh about the whole thing. I remember back when I was 15… but damn.
We later opted against it, but we were considering hiding one of the bottles in the casket.
My mom found some shells from WWII in the basement when cleaning up after a friends dad’s death. They called the police, police called the bomb squad, bomb squad called army reserves, they called active army, who were able to dispose of them. Made the 9 o’clock news.
You know, there was an episode of The Man Show that proposed a service that’d do this for you. If you passed unexpectedly, they’d come in and get rid of all your porn, etc., so your mom would never find out. It was a joke, but I thought it was a damn good idea.
When my sister and our daughters cleaned out my father’s house, we found a HUGE collection of porno movies. All the granddaughters could say was “eeeeewww!”
