Imagine this: your grandfather just passed away. After the funeral, you head over to his house, unfold the boxes, line the bottoms with tape, and begin to pack away the contents of his life. You sift through old records, browned silverware, the silly baseball cap he used to wear to family picnics every year. You open the drawer to pull out his clothing some to keep, some to donate but... hold on...
WHAT IN THE WORLD?
Yeah, you've found it. Your grandpa's collection of anal beads.
As much as it makes you cringe to envision the deepest regions of your Grandpa's butthole, you smile just a little. Yeah, my Grandpa still had it goin' on.
Thanks to the awesome folks at Reddit who contributed their answers to this question. Some answers are silly, some are sad, some are even infuriating. In the end, these are the stories that make us all human. Enjoy!
1/30. A meter long bright pink floppy vibrating snake dildo
2/30. Not a grandparent but a great-aunt. She died in her 80s. Clearing out her kitchen cupboards and we found, in a pile of plastic bags, a loaded Smith and Wesson pistol. We're in the UK. We had to call the police who took it away and disposed of it.
3/30. Not so much shocking, but sad.
My great-aunt had a leather jacket, photos and letters this boy she liked had given her.
I'd heard the story in pieces from her over the years. She was banned from seeing him because he was a Catholic. Her parents hauled her off to Singapore to stop her from seeing him. He died in the war, and her father died during the Fall of Singapore. Her mother re-married, and she spent her whole life living in their house, looking after them until they died.
I never realised she'd kept all his things.
4/30. When I was about 6 or 7 years old, my great grandfather died. After the funeral everybody was invited to go back to his house and go through his belongings. My great grandmother had died the year before, and my grandfather's will stated he wanted all of his possessions to be given to his family. I went upstairs with my mom to my grandfathers room. Upon going through his closet, we discovered a small chest with my grandfather's Klu Klux Klan robe, along with a ton of photos of him at clan meetings. That was also the day I first found out what racism was.
5/30. When my dad died I found a file on his computer that listed all the women he had had sex with. He wrote it in cypher but he's the one who taught me to solve cryptograms so it wasn't too difficult to figure it out. Twenty six women, despite being married for all but two years of his adult life.
6/30. After my uncle passed away in October, we were quite surprised to find that, despite his hermetic lifestyle and shoddy abode, he had over half a million in cash.
[deleted]
Continue reading amazing stories on the next page!
7/30. A sap. It's the lead weighted, leather wrapped club favored by tough guys and mobsters in the 20's and 30's. My grandfather had it in the door pocket of his white ford taurus.
My grandfather was six five, a big man, I have a ring of his you can fit a quarter through. Even at 75 he was not to be fucked with.
I also inherited a pocket sized .25 caliber pistol from him.
8/30. When my grandmother passed, my mom, sister, and I went through the house - top to bottom. Aside from some cool photographs showing my grandmother as a teen/young adult I found some letters between my grandfather and her. In one letter, presumably building off of something she said, he asked if she'd been raped. I only had his correspondence, so I don't know the answer. I stopped reading at that anyway. My mom also found her journal. It was full of comments from a very depressed, tired woman.
Moral of the story: even after death, leave loved ones' letters and journals alone.
9/30. When my uncle died I went and helped clean his place out and I ended up finding his stash of pot. I just threw it away so my grandmother didn't have to see since she was already upset enough.
10/30. After my grandad died we found out that his dad (my great grandad) was a deputy chief Templar in India. We found a photograph and certificate - though now my mother has them (we don't talk, so now I guess I'll never be able to investigate further). We're all from England and had absolutely no idea. Weird.
11/30. After my grandma died I was going through her belongings, and hidden in the very top corner of her closet I found a box containing a "personal massager" from the 70's.
12/30. His porn. I'm not talking about a few DVDs and mags, I'm talking Costco volumes. Oh, and his guide to sado-mashocism, with bookmarks.
Continue reading more people's incredible stories on the next page.
13/30. I discovered that my Great Great Great Grandfather's brother won a Nobel prize.
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14/30. I was responsible for my great uncle's estate. I found a briefcase cleverly hidden beneath a drawer. It contained his porn on VHS, a sex-adventure book, and a LOT of possibly prescription pills imported from Europe. Everything else was totally standard.
15/30. After my grandad died I found boxes of lube and condoms. Weird cause he was really old and it was brand new lube.
16/30. Not a parent, but my wife left incredibly loving statements about me in her diary.
I still haven't been able to gut through reading the whole thing, but I did flip to the back and found where she wrote, "I knew you'd look back here. Thank you for slumming it with me all these years."
For the record, I've never "slummed" a day in my life.
17/30. After my grandmother passed we were packing up her clothes to give to charity when we found her purse (she had been sick for years and hadn't used it in a long time). Tucked inside her wallet was a love letter that she had been carrying for over 60 years. It was not from my grandfather. It was from a man she dated before grandpa who had gone off to fight in WWII. The letter was super steamy. He was writing to her from England just before D-Day. We assume he died shortly after.
18/30. I discovered that my Dad wrote sardonic and witty asides in the margins of many if his books, which were great to read as they were just so him.
Continue reading people's incredible stories on the next page!
19/30. My mom was planning on divorcing my stepdad and kidnapping her friend's baby.
Her death was sudden - an aneurysm in her bran had ruptured. When she was in the hospital her lawyer called her cell phone, which is how I found out about the planned divorce. I never told my stepdad.
The kidnapping wasn't obvious, but we were able to piece it together when going through her belongings.
My mom adored her friend's baby. She had a room in the house for her with a dresser full of outfits. When we were cleaning up we discovered that this dresser was empty, save for a few diapers. Her luggage was also missing. It was odd, but we didn't think too much about it until we found contact information for the landlord of the house she was renting in the next state. A house which she had rented under her maiden name. A house where we found suitcases with my mom's and the baby's clothes.
It sounds terrible, but we were lucky she died when she did.
20/30. After my mom passed, my dad discovered she had been carrying on an affair for years while going through her email account. It's messed him up pretty bad and now he's obsessed with the idea of getting revenge on the guy. I wish I had never found out because it's almost ruined the image of my mom in my head.
21/30. Not my parent, but had a friend disappear 2 years ago and his body was found several states away about 4 months later.
After he had gone missing, his parents got into his apartment and he'd packed up most of his stuff into boxes giving them to different people. His parents each got one, brother, sister, a few friends and I got a small box. He included a note to please honor his request to not open the boxes and give them to the people they were for. They held the boxes until his body was found.
His parents dropped my box by my house after the funeral and we talked for a bit. He'd had some mental issues and they were glad he felt he was finally at peace even though it ended this way.
Going through the box, he gave me ...
some PSone games we'd played together, a small lego set of a car I'd given him for christmas when we were 13 or 14. the last thing in the box was a note book. I opened it and it was a bunch of short stories he'd written. I paged through it and the stories started getting violent and scarey. The last few pages were drawings of dismembered people and animals. It looked very much like Patrick Bateman's planner at the end of American Psycho.
He'd always been a little off and taken medicine for it as long as I'd known him. We would talk 2-3 times a month, but I didn't know it had gotten as bad as it did for him.
I miss him and am sad he's gone, but I'm more sad he thought this was the only thing he could do.
22/30. When my grandma died 8 years ago, my aunts and uncles (my mum has 5 siblings to make a total of 6) found a box. Inside was a black and white photo of a baby boy and a name, date of birth and hospital name scribbled on it. Turns out my gran gave up a baby for adoption after she...
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had my mum, so there's a long lost uncle somewhere out there. As far as I know, no one has tried to track him down yet.
23/30. My grandfather hated cats. Couldn't stand them Wouldn't have them in his house, any time we talked about wanting a cat he'd harrumph and ramble about dogs.
A few years after he passed, my grandmother was moving out to live in a retirement apartment, so she didn't have to deal with stairs or worry about having another fall. As we cleaned, we started going through a lot of my grandfather's stuff. We found, in a box in the basement, a framed picture of my grandfather as a young child, holding a cat. On the back of the picture, lightly in pencil, is the cat's name. No one knows a thing about it, and we can only speculate. But clearly, at one point, he loved that cat.
24/30. When my grandfather died I found an old medal. There were two man on a motorcycle, one of them was driving and the other one was standing up on his seat. I asked by dad about it and it turns out that
my grandfather used to be a motorcycle acrobat. Seriously, how rare was that? How many motorcycle acrobats used to be in middle Europe around 1960/70?
25/30. My dad died a few years ago just before christmas. It was the first death in our family in a long time and it came out of nowhere so everyone was shocked. He still had packages coming in the mail for christmas so I would grab them because I wanted to wrap them up for the people and give them as a last gift from him.
I started opening the packages in my room and just dumping them on my bed. First one was a guitar wall mount, second one was some miscellaneous electronic components and the last one dumped out in slow motion. It was a cock ring, vibrator and some massage oils. I was mortified and just threw them back in the package.
I still have the box tucked on top of my closet because I have no idea wtf to do with it. I just can't give it to my mom because it'd be awkward and I can't use it myself because it'd be awkward so it just sits in my closet and every once in awhile I come across it and laugh.
26/30. My mom died of cancer a couple years ago. While I was going through her office I did some math and figured that she spent just shy of $200,000 on shamans, miracle cures and weird investments in South America during the last two years of her life.
Continue reading amazing stories on the next page!
27/30. My grandfather took my grandmothers phone after she had passed. I had never called the number until 9 months later. Her voicemail was still set to her voice. It made me cry like a baby.
28/30. I found a folder of letters between my two grandmothers. My parents split when I was two, and my mother got together with a psycho when I was five. They were basically conspiring for my entire childhood to protect me as much as they could, and make sure that I had something of a childhood.
29/30. I was cleaning out my parent's attic after they both died (car crash) and I found a bunch of stuff from their teenage hood. They got married when they were in their twenties but had been high school sweethearts before that. Everyone just kind of saw them as this perfect, kind of square couple that settled early. Turns out they were both really into the kink scene back in the day. I'm talking old school kink scene, before the days of the internet when different sexual fetishes were accepted and sex positivity was a thing. There were tons of homemade sex toys, bondage material, and a scrapbook of the kink meetups they would go to secretly together. I have a whole new level of respect for my parents.
-Anonymous
30/30. After my grandpa died, I was scouring through his things and discovered a photo album and a few other documents hidden under one of the bases of the drawers in the dresser. It was him with his wife, him with his kids, him holding his grandchild. Except for they weren't my family. I did a little investigating and found an address in one of the photos. I went to the house, which led me to another house, which led me to my
grandfather's second wife. Not second as in the one he had after my Grandma. Like, simultaneous wife. We all knew that he was a huge business guy who was away a lot, but I never thought that it could be to go to his other life three towns away. To my family, he was known as Norm. To theirs, Teddy. I have no clue what his real name even was. I don't even know who he married first. I may have aunts, uncles, related blood family that I've never met, but after figuring it out I asked the woman to never try to contact me and I hightailed it out of there. Somehow I was able to gather all this information from this woman without letting her in on the secret, so I'm the only one that knows (to my knowledge). I don't plan on telling anyone. I don't want to be the reason for so many people's lives being ruined especially when they were all mourning his loss. Wherever you are, Grandpa, I still love you, and your secret's safe with me.
- Anonymous
External image source: Anonymous for Shutterstock
Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.