Well the title pretty much sums it up nicely. If you found a journal while cleaning out a parents room after they had passed on, would you open it? Would you read it? Would you share what you have read?
What if you found out something you never knew?
I stayed away from asking if it is ethical or not, as that would only further muddy the waters and this would cease to be a IMHO and turn into a GD.
Unless I’d made a deathbed promise to burn it, I’d read the found journal. I might hesitate if the person died very suddenly without the opportunity to destroy it themselves. Whether or not I’d share info with others depends on what it is.
My opinion may be colored by the knowledge the audio tapes my grandmother made are out there, somewhere. I still want to hear them.
Yes, I’d read it, but probably wouldn’t share anything, unless I thought it would be relevant to another family member. If one part seemed very personal, I’d probably skip over it. As a more modern example, after my mother died, I read some of her emails, not out of nosiness, but because I missed her and wanted to read her thoughts. She’d given me her passwords, so she wouldn’t have minded.
My grandfather kept a journal, and I’ve read bits of it. I don’t know how he would’ve felt about that, since he died several decades before I was born.
I thought from the title that the OP was asking if I’d read, say, Parents magazine after I was dead.
Certainly not. I wouldn’t be caught dead reading that rag.
For what the post is really asking, though, my answer is “Why not?” I once took over a subscription from a dead person. Doesn’t bother me at all.
My mother kept a journal during her final battle with cancer. I found it after she died. Reading it, I could see her rapid deterioration, both physically and mentally, as she went through the chemo and final toll. She was writing about things that had never happened and people she hadn’t even talked to.
The only thing I told the rest of the family was “it wasn’t her” and they let me throw it out without anyone else reading it. It was one of the sadder moments of a sad time.
kunilou - yes, that is very similar to a story I heard today. Incredibly sad, yet, they still had the cognition to put pen to paper, coherent or not. A good friend of mines father sunk slowly into dimentia and kept a journal the entire time, every day he would write. Sometimes completely lucid and aware of what was happening to him, though there was an undertone of sadness. Other times he would be channeling some other life it seemed, completely incoherent murmurings. But they were a story too, and they meant something to him.
I’d read it - how could you not, unless maybe if you had express instructions to destroy it? Hell, my parents tell me nothing now - no way could I resist a real candid look at them! (Well, now that I’m an adult they’re candid. I didn’t know my mother used to be a nun until I was 16 and it accidentally came out, though. “Well, it wasn’t any of your business.”)
I doubt my mother (who died 2 years back) ever kept a journal, and I’m sure my father does not, so it’s not an issue. But I have a friend who did come across her mother’s diary and journal about a year ago, and she was quite upset after reading it, as she discovered that her mother had been in love with another man before marrying her father. Or MEETING her father. I’m not quite sure why this bothered her, but it did.
Not one of my parents, but I’ve read my paternal grandmother’s journal from when she was a teenager. I was visiting my dad roughly 10 years after her death and he had it laying around. A friend and I read pretty much the whole thing and it was actually pretty fascinating to read what my grandmother’s life was like in the 1930’s.
The important things I learned were that my grandmother was very popular with the boys back then and that my grandfather started out as a friend of hers. Near the end of the journal she talked about the two of them going out on a date and letting him get under her bra. Strange to think about when the woman I knew was a little gray-haired lady with a strong maternal instinct. But hey, teenagers are teenagers regardless of decade.
Probably not, but that’s more about my individual parents. I would imagine it would change for a lot of people based on the personalities involved.
When I was in high school, I had a family history type assignment. I asked my mom if I could go through a carton of old(ish) photos and papers in our basement, and she gave me permission. One of the things in the box was her journal from when she was on maternity leave (with me). I read it … and it was weird to learn that she was pretty bored and was disappointed that having an infant wasn’t as fun as everyone made it out to be, but instead was rather mundane, annoying, and gross in turns.
I get that this is very normal and not about me personally, but it was still a little vaguely disappointing. She’s a great mom and everything, too – I guess I got more interesting as I aged! 
But overall, it cooled me on the concept of parental journals.
I’ve struggled with this question for 7 years now. My dad was like me, in that he felt things deeply and would sort things out by writing. In his case, his “journal” consisted of thoughts and notes jotted onto a series of desk calendars over several years. I read only a few entries leading up to his death, enough to realize that he shared some personal feelings there.
I’m deeply afraid to read the rest. I’m afraid to read that I’d hurt him in some way, and never had the chance to make it right. On the other hand, reading it could put my guilt to rest.
I would assume they would - I have a crate of 'em from my teen years.
I am keeping a journal FOR my kids - recording special moments, observations, pasted in pictures etc. - mostly about them, but also including writing that reflects my POV or meaning-of-Life type stuff I ponder.
I assume I will give it to each of them - it recently branched into two when I started having more pre-teen discussions with my son - when they are in their 20’s. It’s already, like 100 pages in electronic form…and yes, it is backed up…
I’d read the journal. But not if there were any kind of note (in the journal, in the will, whatever) that it should not be read. I might, however, still keep it around for a future generation to read–it’s one thing to not want your children to find out all your secrets, but another for descendents who never met you.
I stumbled across my dad’s senior yearbook when I was in highschool. A bunch of the things people had written in it were addressed to “Xerox,” and when I pressed him, Dad admitted that he got the nickname through a particular method he’d developed of cheating on tests (write out a cheat sheet, and use a photocopy machine to shrink it small enough to be easily concealed). 
After the death of my grandmother 10 years ago, I read a pile of letters, and papers. I was surprised to find out that she had been quite a hellion. She was almost kicked out of her church for being what they called a “rowdy girl”. She was also dating someone before she married my grandfather.
It all took me by surprise, but I got to see a dimension of my grandmother that I had never known existed. I liked her better after that.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I found out later from his friend that my father had believed he would die when he entered the hospital for surgery, and in fact a terrible series of mishaps occurred and he did die as a result. He had written his own obituary and left it out on the dining room table for us to find, and he had obviously cleaned the place up in preparation.
Reading through these posts again, I’m realizing that he had intentionally left his journal out in the open. Right now I’m thinking he wanted me to read it.
Yes. I am a snoop.
A great-grandparent of mine kept a journal and later typed up his memoirs, for who or what I don’t know. There were some sad truths in there about his past as a soldier and his relationship with my great-grandmother, but those who read it had no illusions about who he was.
I am likely still at an age where I do have illusions about my parents and loved ones, but there is something about learning someone you love is petty or scared or bitter that is truly bittersweet.
I don’t know about reading a parent’s journal. Too intimate, too much potential for shock, hurt, or disappointment. I am not sure I want to know my parents at the level where I am peering into their personal thoughts. There is a process during hospice when patients are encouraged to write down things they want people to know, and just thinking about reading THAT bothered me.
I’d feel less apprehension about reading a grandparent’s journal–someone less close to me, someone whose basic life I am curious about because of the differences in the time periods we lived in.
Like WordMan I am writing a journal for my son, but that’s a different sort of thing.
Neither of my parents kept a journal that I know of, but I do have a lot of their letters to each other, from before they were married, and some from a couple years later, when Dad was working away from home.
They were, shall we say, enlightening. (Not to mention embarrassing. Apparently my parents were not the prudey people I thought they were.) I ended up wondering why and when they stopped feeling like that. I think they didn’t, really, but they sure didn’t show it much. I think it got lost in the kid/family stuff over the years.
It gave me a whole new view of them.
Not a journal, but when we were going through her things after my mom died I read some letters and cards that my dad had sent my mom. There was one card in particular that was really touching. It wasn’t er, sexy or anything, just a heartfelt expression of romantic love, but it still was kind of odd to see another side of my folks. It also made me very very happy and secure to know how much they loved each other.
A friend of mine read her late mother’s diaries, and wished she hadn’t. Her parents were old-school hippies, junkies, alcoholics and basically dysfunctional. Her childhood wasn’t that great, and she blamed her dad mostly, although she thought her mom was lame for staying with him.
In her mother’s diaries, she discovered that her mom had seriously contemplated taking her infant daughter and leaving him, because of his destructive behaviors.
Then she didn’t. 
Many things might have been different if she’d stuck to her guns.