35 Secrets About People That Surfaced After Their Death And May Have Forever Changed The Way Their Loved Ones Remember Them

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

That he was a millionaire and he set aside the money to pay for my kids to go to private school. Thanks, Uncle.

My great Aunt Bernice was always "lovingly" referred to by the family as "Bernice the Wh*re" because she had a bunch of babies and told the family that she left them with various family members across the country immediately after birth. I did some Ancestry.com research and discovered that aside from the 3 living children everyone knew, she lost six babies- three stillbirths that were a year apart respectively, then stillborn twins, then a baby girl who lived two days. Poor Bernice. She somehow felt that there would be less stigma attached to the idea that she was leaving her children over and over than the reality of her losses.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My grandpa was a good, straight-laced, hardworking man. He liked gardening, and cooking meals from his native Poland. The only punk thing about him was this bada*s old tattoo on his arm, which we never asked about.

At his funeral, my uncle explained that he’d paid 12 cigarettes for that tattoo in a refugee camp. Turns out my gentle grandpa had been separated from his family by Nazis in the invasion, and sent to a forced labour farm. After the farm was liberated, he wound up in this refugee camp with other ex-slaves. We believe he bought the tattoo there to cover up some kind of slave number the Nazis gave him; kind of a way to bury the past behind him before building a new life from scratch in Australia.

We are reasonably sure that my uncle killed his father....

Grampa L, a part-time Southern Baptist preacher, was like many men of his generation. He went to work, came home expecting dinner on the table no later than ten minutes after he walked in the door, and would sit in his favorite chair in the parlor after dinner to read the paper and drink. He was a mean, abusive drunk and it grew worse after Gramma S was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, making her an "unfit wife."

That's when and why we suspect that Grampa L began assaulting his daughters, including my then 7-year-old mother and my then-17-year-old Aunt C. I don't know how long the assaults went on, only that one week after Uncle J graduated college, Grampa L "accidentally discharged his rifle while cleaning it for hunting season."

The only problem with the story is that Grampa L never participated in hunting season. Said hunting was for savages, in fact.... But Uncle J was well-known for being an avid and enthusiastic hunter.

I knew my uncle, a priest and chaplain at a Catholic university, had smuggled birth control into campus. I found out at his funeral that he had helped at least two students, maybe many more, get off campus for abortions. I’m not Catholic or even Christian but I’m proud to have named my son after my late uncle.

One of my grandfathers died some years back. My last surviving grandparent, my mom's father. He was a pretty hard dude. He was a partisan fighter in WWII, despite being barely past his teens for much of the war. Immigrated to the US, married my grandma, got his teaching degree despite having had to learn English on the fly. Really inspiring.

But when he died, my mom and I were the ones who went through all the belongings. We found children's books, in Polish (my grandfather was born in Poland,) dated to the 1920s. Either he brought them over, or he had them sent over. It's just really telling to me, that my hard-a*s grandpa wanted to keep books he presumably had as a child. I own them now. They're like treasure to me.

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

My boyfriend died on April 5th, 2022. I found a card for a jewelry store with a ladies name and number written on it. Idk why, but I called. She remembered him. I found out that day, after he died, that he had been looking for the engagement ring I had been dreaming of having for years.

A bit late, but a bit of backstory: my grandfather was in the Yugoslav Navy, and one of the strongest swimmers in the country.

When my grandfather would want to pass time, he would go to beaches, sit around, basically lifeguarding the beach without getting paid, just because he was “bored”. He saved multiple peoples lives over the years. He passed away in late 2019, and my mother told me all kinds of stories about him after he passed, and this one stood out!

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.