People Share Their Heartwarming And Amazing Finds While Cleaning Out A Deceased Family Member’s Home

People share wonderful stories about heartwarming secrets their deceased loved ones kept.

A Top Secret Past

“Backstory: Grandpa was high up in the CIA

Actually found top secret folders! My grandpa was in the CIA and helped oversee the beginning of the sky marshal program.

I opened a box with a legitimate red top secret stamp across it, so of course, I opened it!

It had a bunch of what my 15-year-old self would call ‘boring papers,’ but something did catch my eye

One of the things I found was a pamphlet. The cover showed a highly detailed schematic of a 747 jet. The title read something like: ‘747: Weak Zones’

My dad somehow called someone from the FBI who came out, took one look, and then called someone else. He waited with us until someone who didn’t work for the FBI but had clearance over this stuff arrived.

The first guy left, and the other guy asked us where everything was. We showed him the boxes, he took them, loaded them in his car, and drove away.

A week later the house was robbed and a lot of my grandparent’s special things were taken – Including several large file cabinets

I’ve always thought it must have been the government doing a clean sweep. He was pretty high up at one point. Oliver North was at his funeral, and a few other top dogs I didn’t know, also showed up. I have a family picture with ‘Oli North’ from when they worked together.”

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A Life Well Loved

“My wife and I moved into our granny’s (wife’s grandmother) house after she passed with a pretty aggressive cancer. While cleaning things out, moving our stuff in, we found a bunch of letters and cards the kids all made for her, she kept every single one next to her chair, and would often read them.

Most recently we found a cassette from an old answering machine that she kept full of messages from her husband, who had passed over 15 years before, saying how much he loved her and couldn’t wait to see her. Sadly I’d never met the guy, but figured we’d have gotten along well.”

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A Father’s Secret

“My dad was a pretty reserved guy. While I knew in my heart he would lay down and die for me without a moment’s hesitation, he never said ‘I love you’ or ‘I’m proud of you’ or anything like that. It’s just who he was.

After he died of cancer, we went to his office to clear it out. I’d never really been in his actual office since, on the rare occasions I’d see him at work, he’d usually meet me at the reception.

Well, when we went in there, it was practically a shrine to my sister and me. Every certificate, photo, newspaper clipping, program was hung up on the walls of his office. A number of people came by to pay their respects as we were clearing things out and, again and again, I heard ‘he was so proud of you.’ ‘I’ve heard so many things about you, it’s nice to meet you in person.’ ‘You were so special to your father. He spoke the world of you.’

Honestly, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Definitely one of the more bittersweet moments in my life.”

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A Surprising History

“My husband and I cleaned out my grandma’s house after she passed. She was a hoarder, but luckily of the ‘pack rat’ variety so everything was neatly packed away in thousands of boxes and drawers. It took us nearly three weeks to get everything out of the house, and we found so many things that I had never known my grandma had done.

She built a boat with her first fiancé prior to marrying my grandpa, she traveled the world making friends with some of the most interesting people like a legit member of African royalty whom she had a long-lived penpal friendship.

Among the cool memories, we found beautiful jewelry and dresses that she had kept for us as gifts that we never received. I also found out that my dad had been a baby model for Sears, through the newspaper clippings she kept.

It was an emotional, wild ride for those three weeks. Her sons sold most of the non-keepsake items in a garage sale and made nearly $4,000, all things priced under $5, so you can imagine how much stuff she had accumulated throughout the years.

She was the coolest, spunkiest grandma, and I miss her every day, but I am glad I got to learn so much more about her through her collections (or ‘junk’ as my dad would call it).”

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Turning The Corner

“My best friend was killed in a car accident when he was 15. I was like another son to his parents and a few weeks after his death, his mother asked me to come over to help go through his things, mainly because we basically treated our clothes as one gigantic wardrobe and half the stuff in his closet was mine, including the shirt he was wearing when he was killed. When we first went into his room, his mom said to me, ‘You have 10 minutes to remove anything you don’t want me to see’ and she handed me a duffel bag.

I shut the door behind me, pulled out his sock drawer and took out a bag I had stashed there. Then I lifted his mattress and grabbed the two adult magazines and the video my brother gave us. I zipped up the bag and opened the door.

Together we went through his stuff, me grabbing my clothes and her giving me his clothes that she knew I wore all of the time. After a few minutes, I decided to play some music. I turned on his stereo and hit play on the cassette player and Journey’s ‘Faithfully’ starts playing. After a few seconds, dubbed over the song, is my friend’s voice, saying mushy things to this girl he’s been crushing on since the eighth grade. I listen for a minute then I just bust out laughing. It was so corny that I couldn’t help it. Once I started laughing, his mom starts laughing and crying at the same time. It was the first time she had laughed since the accident and later on, she said it was a turning point for her in her grieving process. To me, it was my best friend just being goofy over some girl. I still think about him almost every day even though it’s been 31 years.”

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An Affair Missed By Time

“I work in a retirement community. When someone passes and has no family, a company comes in about a week later and indiscriminately throws everything in the trash. Since I have a master key, I try to slip into these vacant units and rescue significant items before this happens. I’m not a materialist and definitely not a looter. Everything I take gets donated to local charities, the person’s church, or the historical society.

I’ve found some pretty interesting stuff. Coin and stamp collections, illegal substances and paraphernalia, adult toys, smut collections, military service records (the most notable being from Nazi Germany), weapons and ordinances, you name it. Elderly folks have lived lives no less adventurous than those of us who aren’t to that point yet.

But the first time I read a diary was heartbreaking, and I’ll never do it again.

I never grew ‘attached’ to any of the residents as I’m something of an introverted loner, but Mary was my favorite person there. She would always manage to find me when I was working and strike up a conversation rife with dirty jokes. She’d offer me a drink when I came by to change her lightbulbs or smoke alarm batteries, and although I do small favors in my spare time for the people living here – changing walker bearings, for instance – she would offer to take me out for a meal as a thank you unlike everyone else. Mary seemed to be the liveliest of all the residents and it blew my mind that she was single (retirement community residents often hook up or otherwise pair off).

Mary’s diary was actually a series of a dozen books, documenting her life all the way from her early 20s up through the day before she died. She had pictures of herself throughout the years within the pages. The pictures of Mary in her prime remain the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Her writing was powerful. Moving. And as she aged, her articulation improved and stirred something within my soul.

As I read her diary, I felt an eerie closeness to her. Much like myself, Mary was introverted and something of a loner yet spent her whole life pining to find her soul mate. She wrote hundreds of sorrowful, romantic poems which frequently brought tears to my eyes. There were detailed accounts of her Femdom lifestyle and kinky interests, lamentations about how culture predisposed strong women to a life of struggle, and up until her 50s, the constant hope that she’d find a man willing to submit fully to her leadership. On her 52nd birthday, she gave up that hope and resigned to being alone for the rest of her life.

Her heart just wasn’t in it after that. She started skipping weeks in her diary. Even entire months. Mary’s writing warped from a beautiful portrait of her life to a cold obligation. It hurt to see that change; where something she loved had continued solely out of habit.

But like a tree in the spring, that passion bloomed again in the last two years of her life. She wrote thousands of words about a much younger man who was attractive, kind, smart, funny, and both confident and shy at the same time. How that combination of traits reignited a fire within her that had been snuffed out decades ago. She never named who it was. The breath of vigor returning to her writing coincided with the month I began working here.

I still don’t know how I feel about it. Flattered, incredibly sad, lonely, angry at the cruelty of time’s twisted little games. Mary was the woman of my dreams who just happened to be born 50 years too early, and I never even knew such an amazing human being existed until she was already gone. I’m glad that I was able to bring a bit of sunshine into her life toward the end, but if I’d have known she fancied me so, I feel like there could have been more.”

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A Grandmother Leaves Prepared

“My grandma died when I was 16 after getting cancer for the third time. My grandad moved into a smaller apartment and my cousins and I helped to clean out their house. (There are nine of us, aged at the time from 12 – 26).

In the house, we found more than 20 wrapped presents and envelopes of money, addressed to all of us. They were for the big occasions that she knew she wouldn’t live to see us have. Before she had died, she had organized 21st birthday presents for those of us who weren’t yet 21, engagement presents, and wedding presents, each with a card written by hand. I remember being so overwhelmed with emotion. She was an incredible woman who loved her family dearly and wanted to celebrate her grandchildren, even if she couldn’t be there herself.”

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Some Heartwarming Hidden Finds

“My wife was not a gift giver. It had to do with the way she was raised. Her parents complained about money and made all their kids crazy about it. You didn’t buy anything that wasn’t needed. I tried getting her gifts of flowers, candy, jewelry, and perfume early in our marriage but she would return what she could and get upset about what she couldn’t. She thought it was a waste of money. I received less than 10 gifts during our marriage for Christmas, my birthday, and Father’s Day. Never anything for Valentine’s Day. I learned to buy her practical gifts like appliances and practical clothing. She really appreciated and enjoyed those.

She tried to get over this pathological problem, but in our 29 years together, I was a construction worker and made very little money, which exacerbated her problems with spending money on anything not needed. Twenty years into our marriage, I went back to college, got a degree in medicine and started making a much more substantial income. She didn’t start buying me gifts but admitted it was abnormal not to be able to since we now had plenty of money. She also started accepting and enjoying flowers and cards from me for romantic occasions like our anniversary. She passed from cancer nine years ago, and I found two interesting things in her dresser and jewelry box. Inside her jewelry box, behind a drawer, was a $100 bill. So odd she’d lose a $100 bill but not odd at all that she never told me considering all the friction her fixation with money had caused. The other item was a very romantic Valentine’s Day card in her underwear drawer. It was specific, ‘To My Husband.’ I assumed she bought it and forgot to give it to me, or perhaps didn’t live long enough to give it to me. But it touched my heart at a hard time.”

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Putting A Kid At Ease

“In 2005, my sister died in a jet skiing accident out on the lake. She was 11, I was 9, and after the funeral, my parents decided it was time to go through her stuff to pack up and donate. I’m really nosy, and I really needed something to do, so I was allowed to help them. I served mostly as a runner boy for the items as they went through it, just sorting it in the living room while they went through everything in her room. The last thing she said to me was, ‘I hate you.’ We got into a fight just before she got on the jet ski with my aunt, and that’s the last time we spoke.

Going through her stuff I found a picture she had drawn of me, her and one of my other sisters, and a little note admitting how much she loved her brothers and sisters. This really helped put my mind at ease about the whole thing. I know she really loved me and that if she had known those would be the last words she said to me she would not have said it, but being 9 years old, watching her be in the hospital for three days, then waiting four more days for the funeral and what not to get to that picture. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with, but that picture helped.

I never leave someone now when bad words have been exchanged. Not knowing if that’s the last thing they hear me say, I cannot in good conscious leave on a bad note.”

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Two Surprises Hidden In A Secret Compartment

“My Great Uncle was a loving man.

He and my Great Aunt owned a couple horses, and every morning he would open the window and call to them, (in horse-speak of course), they would always answer back.

They lived in Casper, Wyoming. Back in the 50s, he had worked in the oil fields and came home filthy with it every day.

My Great Uncle loved people. When the space station Mir was about to burn up and re-enter, he had all the neighborhood over to his place to watch it one last time. He had a small Christmas tree in his living room, year-round, upon which he hung pictures of friends he was currently praying for. If you met the man, you could not leave without him giving you a Susan B. Anthony Quarter and a Buckeye, which was to remind you to be tough, but always say your prayers.

I was 8 years old and pretty clueless, but my Great Uncle Gordon showed my sister and me something that kept both of our attention. He liked to collect things, one of which was Chinese furniture. He explained to us that on every piece of authentic Chinese furniture, there are hidden compartments, for either deeds, money or other contraband the communist government wanted to destroy. He had three pieces of real furniture, and it was one of the greatest puzzles of my childhood trying to find the secret compartments.

Being 8, I didn’t know until my dad told me decades later; that Uncle Gordon was very sick. The years of working in oil had him growing metastatic cancer all over his lungs (he was not a smoker a day in his life), and he was in constant, agonizing pain. He still loved people so much, while probably wishing he could just die.

A couple years later, he died. We went up for the funeral, and afterward, when we went to his house, I ran into his bedroom, because I had to find the last secret compartment.

And I did.

Inside, I found $5,000 cash, in $20 bills, and a letter from my Uncle on National Hemlock Society letterhead. It was written to whoever found it that he was tired of hurting so much, every day. He explained that he went to Mexico a couple years before with my Great Aunt and purchased enough nitroglycerin pills to stop his heart. And he did it. I don’t think he told my Great Aunt.

My Great Uncle shaped how I felt about physician-assisted suicide; maybe suicide as a whole. I believe in God, and I do not believe that God would turn away my Uncle Gordon. He was a man deserving of rest and comfort.”

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Playing With The Boys

“My great grandma died when I was a teenager. I was helping clean her apartment, and I found a photo of her from around 1930 wearing a men’s suit standing in front of a car. I asked my grandma about it, and she sat me down and told me the following:

My great grandma was the only one of my family to come over before WWII. She was an orphaned Jewish immigrant who didn’t speak English and had no money and three siblings to support, so she started making and selling illegal ‘shine’ (this was during Prohibition.) She lived in Chicago and apparently knew and was friends with Al Capone. She would cross-dress when she needed to.”

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Insight Into His Parent’s Relationship

“After my dad died a couple years ago, I went through a bunch of old pictures from his college days. He (let’s call him Todd) and my mom (call her Nancy) met when they were both living in the dorms there. I found a picture of all the guys in my dad’s dorm, and they all signed it. My dad’s roommate had written, ‘Todd, you were the best roommate ever… since you hardly spent one night here since meeting Nancy…’

At first, I felt a little uncomfortable, but in hindsight, it seems kind of sweet. My parents were never overtly romantic in front of my siblings and me, so although I knew they cared about each other, I never really thought of them as being ‘in love.’ I guess it’s nice to know they were so crazy about each other when they first met.”

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Finding Out The Truth About An Estranged Father

“My dad is a cop who worked a case where a man who committed suicide had only one relative alive, his son. The son had cut off all talk as soon as he turned 18 years old, 20 or more years ago. The son called my dad when he got to the house asking for assistance. He sounded pretty upset on the phone, so my dad raced over as soon as he could.

The father was a serious drinker with little education and worked a factory job he got with no high school degree. He was believed to be not-so-smart for lack of better term.

They stepped into the house to find hundreds of books. Towering stacks, rooms full, furniture covered with books. All varying subjects from fiction to how-to. And in the front of each book was what the man had learned from it, almost like a summary.

The son was blown away; he couldn’t believe what his father had been doing with the last decades of his life. The books are going to be donated, the books the son didn’t pack up and ship to read himself.”

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A Thoughtful Grandmother

“My grandma died the autumn of the year that I was 11 years old. My mum is one of eight children, but her siblings are spread all over the country, and she had to do a lot of the house clearing. One day, I went with her because I wanted to say goodbye to the place.

My nana used to compulsively order from catalogs – she ran up thousands of pounds of debt, probably because she was housebound and bored and trying to buy the affection of her family. We were cleaning her room, and among the piles of clutter we found a box labeled ‘Chris’ (me) Xmas present.’

It was a tacky musical box ornament and not something that I’d ever pick out. But the fact that she’d bought it and put it aside all those months before, even though she was really ill, and that in a way she still managed to give it to me, made it really special. I feel like she meant for that to happen.”

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