"I Have Uncovered Seven Different Marriage Certificates": People Reveal Shocking Secrets Their Loved Ones Took To Their Graves
We know everybody keeps secrets, but the most shocking secrets are always when you discover something new about someone you thought you knew front to back.
Recently, Reddit user u/HarryHolmes68 asked, "What did you find out about one of your loved ones after they passed away?" Here are a few wild ones:
1."After my maternal grandmother passed, we found that she 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 five kids that 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, and some to this day make a trip to where we spread her ashes and send 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 four decades."
2."I was kicked out at 16, and my best friend's mother took me in as her own. She died yesterday, and 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."
3."I found out that my grandmother lied about all her recipes. I used to ask for copies of recipes of my favorites but I could never make them taste right. I'd cook things with her that never tasted right, even when I did it with her help. I always got the 'Oh don't worry, it takes practice,' and 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 the way they should."
4."My dad passed when I was 6 years old, and he loved golf. My single mom couldn’t afford to put me in it, but I used to dabble at the local park. Finally, in college, I could afford the university rate of $200 all summer (‘92). One night I went out and joined two older guys. They saw my last name on my tag and asked if I was Joe’s kid. I was. I spent those nine holes learning about him crashing his Aston Martin, hitchhiking across Canada with just his wallet, and how much he could drink! But they didn’t leave out the fact that his crazy partying days ended when he met mom. That happened 30 years this summer, heck maybe to the week! But I’m still tearing up finishing this."
5."My uncle was apparently a sperm donor back in the 1950s. New cousins pop up on 23andMe every couple of years. I've met one, and some of my relatives have met another who I've only chatted with online."
6."My grandfather, who passed away around seven years ago, had a VHS collection of pornography and it was all blonde women. It's the funniest thing to find though when you're mourning, I can tell you that for sure. Sentimental things everywhere: Pictures on his desk, the thumbprint tie I made for him as a child, and a MASSIVE box of pornography."
7."I found out that my grandma couldn't read. She was dyslexic and labeled stupid. Teachers said it was a waste of time to teach her. She was smart, kind, strong. They should have taught her. She loved to listen to books on tape, I never knew that was the only way she could read."
8."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. They're big things to me, though."
9."Nothing too shocking, but my grandma kept a picture of Barack Obama in her underwear drawer. Not sure why. He was just...there."
10."On the evening of my father's passing, I commented to my mother that I held onto the fact that they had loved each other for 50 years. Only to be told that no, it was a loveless marriage. She was a lesbian who had wanted kids and some semblance of stability. They got together in the '50s when things were very different. She only started to like him a little when he got dementia and his mind/personality disappeared in the last few years. Like a light bulb going on, it explained so many things. I have some issues of my own that sprouted in that good soil."
11."My maternal grandmother was a con artist and lived life on the run since she was 21 years old. I have since uncovered seven different marriage certificates around different states, marrying different men, who I suppose were 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."
12."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 found it heartwarming. He died in 1972."
13."My boyfriend died on April 5, 2022. I found a card for a jewelry store with a lady's name and number written on it. I don't know why, but I called. She remembered him. The day after he died, I found out that he had been looking for the engagement ring I had been dreaming of having for years."
14."My husband found out his aunt was actually his grandma, and his father grew up believing his grandmother was his mother. That's what everyone believed. It rearranged the whole family dynamic as suddenly cousins became siblings/aunts and uncles, etc. It's been a couple of years now, and they're still getting used to it. My father-in-law had mostly figured it out while she was still alive, but how do you say that? It was finally proven after papers were found after her passing."
15."My mom had an extreme type A personality and liked things to be neat and clean. When I was growing up, my dad would tease her from time to time about using the vacuum outside. I thought it was a joke he had made up to poke fun at one of her quirks. After she died, I found out the joke wasn’t made up at all. One day, before they had kids, my dad had come home from work to find my mom vacuuming the outdoor patio with the aid of an extra long extension cord."
16."My grandmother was a mafia girlfriend and my dad was the product of an affair with a married man and not the man who raised him. I also found out the string of really bad luck she had in the '60s was actually that man trying to get rid of her because she went full Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction on him when he tried to break off the affair. We met our long-lost family after I took a DNA test and we are afraid of them."
17."Four women were seated to one side at my grandfather's funeral. They were obviously at ease with each other, chatting freely, but were NOT known family or friends. A few discrete inquiries revealed that they were my grandfather's four current girlfriends. Note that he died at the age of 96, and had an ex-wife and current live-in girlfriend. He was a 'man of commendable vigor,' by many standards."
18."My mother died the day I found out I was pregnant with twins back in January. I found out that she kept the pregnancy book she used for her pregnancy with me and was planning to give it to me when I became pregnant. It breaks my heart to know I didn’t get to tell her and see her excitement."
19."It turned out that my grandfather had a whole other family. We found out via one of those DNA family tree sites. They weren’t even in another state or somewhere far — they were like 15 minutes away in the next town over."
20."When he was still alive, my father-in-law had two of the exact same car, an early '90s Citroën. One was in great condition and the second was in mediocre condition. His thought was that if he bought the second car, he would probably never need to buy parts. His wife was not thrilled, but just mostly rolled her eyes. When he passed, she found a set of keys in a pouch with paperwork for a garage across town. It turned out he must have needed just one more set of spare parts after all."
21."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."
22."I found out that my mother was advised not to have children because it would likely shorten her life. She had my sister and me anyway and no one ever breathed a word to us about it. She died in her late 40s. I don’t feel guilty, it was her choice — but it was hard to hear and I think about it often."
23."I'm 23, and my grandad had cancer for at least half of my life. When he was first diagnosed, he decided that he didn't want me or my siblings to know about it, as he didn't want us looking at him differently and worrying whether or not it would be the last time we ever got to see him. He was given between five and seven years to live, and he made it many more past that. Even toward the end, when it got harder to hide what he was going through, we still didn't know the full extent of it. I still don't know a lot of the details on when he was diagnosed with what. He died in July 2020. I'm still extremely broken over it. But I also know that he didn't want us to hurt, he wanted us to smile and enjoy the time we had with him. So that's what I'm trying to do. I try to find a little piece of him in every day I live through, and try to enjoy whatever time I have left on this planet."
24."My great-Aunt Bernice was always 'lovingly' referred to by the family as 'Bernice the Whore' 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 three 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."
25."My father died a little over a year ago. About six months later a woman contacted my sister on Facebook suspecting that she (the other woman) was his daughter from a one-night stand he had 50+ years ago when he was in his early 20s. A DNA test has since confirmed she is correct. The birth took place before he met and married my mother, but the mother of the other woman says my father knew about the child because she told him. That son of a bitch took his secret all the way to the grave with him. My sister and I have agreed not to tell my mother because, really, what good would come from doing so?"
26."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."
27."My dad never actually graduated from university. I found out when I was working on a memory book for my nephew about his grandpa. I went through some old binders and found some stuff from the university, but no certificate. I carefully asked my mom and she admitted it."
28."My dad's Uncle Bob was gay. Bob's wife, Helen, was a lesbian. They didn't have kids and basically passed as a straight couple their whole lives because it was just easier to live that way in the 1950s and later (I'm sure they cared about each other and were fine housemates, but they lived together in California and the rest of us stayed on the East Coast. We never went out there to visit them but Bob would usually travel back here every year or two). Bob passed away in 1998 and left a very generous amount of money to my parents at a time when they didn't have much. He was a genuine, fun, and caring man, and he would've been shunned by other members of our family had he not lived this way, happily married to Helen."
29."I found out that my grandma, who I was very close to, was actually a really mean and hateful person to everyone but me. I imagined her to be as loving to everyone as she was to me, but it turns out I was the only one she liked."
