Before I went into the Air Force, my grandfather and I went through some old stuff. The things I wanted went into a WWII wooden ammo box. Everyone knew it was mine. When I came home my uncle had gone through the box, taking whatever he wanted. Grandpa tried to stop him, but he did it anyway.
When my grand father died, I had nothing to remember him, not even a picture.
Years later, an aunt sent me 5 pictures I’d taken of her children, one had grandpa in it. Bless her.
I live about 10 blocks away from my parents and we go over there all the time, since they pick up my kids after school on Wednesdays.
Just a few months ago I found out my Mom had thrown out all my old school work, which I had kept in their attic my whole life, with stuff from when I was in third or fourth grade onwards through college. I was going to pull something out to show my kids what my own schoolwork was like, to find a cleared attic. (Mind you, I had last gone up to that attic for the same purpose just a few weeks earlier, it’s not like I took it in my head to check things out after 20 years.)
I can’t blame them too much for that though, as my wife pointed out, “if you really cared about it you’d have taken it with you when you moved out”, which I did do for the stuff I really, really prized. And the attic was much less dustier without 15+ years of papers slowly browning away in the dry space.
On the other hand, about 4 years ago she threw out (without consulting with me) a cherished old Cookie Monster doll that I won as a prize at summer day camp when I was 9 or 10 years old “because it was ratty”. This was left at my parents house because my wife refused to bring it into ours, around our then-small children, “because it was ratty”. Well I still loved him. 
My mom is the opposite - she has a deathly fear of someday one of her children resenting her for throwing out their “things” and will not throw out anything without a detailed interview about it.
I had to let her mail me my old baseball trophies so I could throw them out. I seriously could not care less about my baseball trophies. In a related incident she called me to apologize, for letting one of my horse figurines get broken when I told her please don’t dust it, because it’s very delicate (I was maybe 12 at the time). And sent me a new identical porcelain horse figurine. Which broke in the mail. Because it’s very delicate. Lord, I could go on. Most recently she was in disbelief that I did not want my old Garfield books. BUT ARE YOU SURE!? Yes, yes I am. Please I am begging you, get rid of them.
I had a perfectly happy childhood, I’m just not sentimental about “things.”
When I was a kid my father had some valuable 19th-century silver dollars in a small box on his dresser. One day, I took them and spent them on stuff like candy. No, I didn’t ***sell ***them to get what they were worth, I ***spent ***them for $1 each. :smack::smack::smack:
My wife would, from time to time, gather together clothes she was no longer wearing so they could go to Goodwill. A nice thing to do, but she didn’t restrict herself to her belongings–she gave away my things too.
I realized this when I was looking for a golf shirt one day–it commemorated a company golf day when I worked for XYZ Co., and had my name embroidered on it, along with the company name and date of the tournament. I should point out that when I worked there, XYZ Co. provided us with many golf shirts, jackets, coats, and other wearables. They were great quality, quite comfortable, and even though I left XYZ Co., I still used them frequently. But when I asked about my XYZ Co. golf shirt, she confessed that she gave all my XYZ stuff to the Goodwill without telling me because, “you don’t work there any more. Why would you want that stuff?”
I enjoyed working for XYZ Co., and thought I had some nice souvenirs of my time there. But they’re gone. Mine is not as tragic as some of the stories here, but it still bothers me, years later.
I think that this is the underlying message in most of these cases…it’s a form of passive aggression.
Not gave away, threw away *Star Wars #1 $0.35 *because I HAD THE BIG-STYLE COMICS, which was big, but worthless.
When the Baptist Church bastards got the block rezoned and forced out the local grocer, he had to clean out about 30 years worth of junk from the basement as well as the inventory from the store. In the basement, he came across an old lever-action .32 cal rifle with a half octagon barrel. On the metal tang that extends over the top of the stock was inscribed the date Winchester Model 1892. The gun’s bluing was about gone and the action was too sloppy, but he offered it to me and I accepted it.
You can imagine how I felt when I came home from Navy boot camp, went into my old room and found the gun missing. I asked my stepfather where the hell it was and he told me he gave it to my brother, since he didn’t think I wanted it anymore. Now why the hell would you think that? I was totally pissed. My brother had it all restored and never offered to give it back to me, even after I told him the story and told him it was mine. At one point he gave it to his druggy kid, who almost sold it to buy a fix. My brother got it back from him, but still has it. I’m still pissed about that.