Finding a LO's unusual belongings after they pass?

No one is going to be able to compete with finding the dog's gallstones!

Luckily the thing I kept finding when I cleaned out my father things was CASH. He had little bank envelopes of cash tucked everywhere. I had to carefully go through every pocket, every suitcase, every bag, every nook and cranny in the house.

I was a nosy child so I don't think there was anything that I hadn't discovered in my parent's farm long before it came time to clean up. I was always a little disappointed my nephews and niece weren't inclined to go snooping around to discover all the little treasures kids might find amusing - one thing that comes to mind is a little fur wrap? scarf? made so that the head clamped to the backside with the tail left hanging down. Ugly, impractical and definitely not PC!

Dogs galls stones! Almost spit out my coffee.

For my parents [late 90's], they kept every single income tax form from the 1940's to 2017. And all of Dad's pay-stubs from work.

My Mom kept the immunization certificate for my polio shot from the 1950's.

I had already started cleaning out Moms house while she was living there. The best thing is she kept her bank statements so I had five years worth for Medicaid. My Mom was a product of the Depression so never was surprised with things she kept.

When my dad died we found dried fish flakes in a leather case with a note stating "keep this with your money it will bring you good luck." The note was sign by someone with a date in the 60's.

When clearing out Mom and Stepdads House I was taking all the pictures off the walls.

In one of the bedrooms was a portrait of the two of them. A photo taken by them by a photographer not long after they married.

I took it down and leaned it up against the wall. It fell over. There was an envelope taped to the back.

I opened envelope. There was a letter addressed to “Whoever finds this Letter”.

The letter started out saying” I guess if you have found this letter I am dead and gone.” “Have fun cleaning out my house”.

Shell,

No need to apologize! I certainly laughed when I found it.

Honestly I had forgotten about it until I saw the posts in this thread today. I know I kept the letter. Not sure where I put it.

Thinking about it made me smile today.

I found some love notes my Dad had written my mom during the war and beyond.
He was a very romantic fellow. He wrote things like "My Darling Jean" and just beautiful words. I also found the medals off of his military uniform.

I had known they had a deep love but never got to witness it cause I was very young when he died. But I did see the faraway look in my mom's eyes always and I'm sure it was him that she was thinking about.

When we cleaned out my parents garage..we found coffee cans full of pistachio shells.. never have figured that one out! As for me ,, I have a pill bottle with my DDs baby teeth in it. And an envelope with her chihuahuas baby teeth that got pulled by the vet. Have no idea why we saved that.. but there it is.

Not so funny, but more like a "WTF".....I found out that my mom had an alias!!!!!!

I have raised my eldest granddaughter from the age of three, she is now 30. Her mother (my daughter) has pretty much cut out the whole family. As a result I am mom as well as grandma. We share everything...everything!
One day we were talking about being prepared for the inevitable and she said "Tell me where you keep your "toys" and I will make sure to get rid of them before anyone knows about it!" I love that girl!

It will be 3 weeks this Friday that my 90 year old mother passed. She lived with me and I was her care provider for the past 5 years. I've just started sifting through the mountains of things she stockpiled in her room. I found a silver oval tin with small circular openings at the top of each end and a little silver coin in one of the small circular openings. I think it might be an old transportation token holder. IF ANYONE KNOWS, PLEASE TELL ME! With that thought in mind, as I ran my finger gently over the opening and the coin I imagined my mom dressed in stunning business attire and lovely high heels, walking to the bus in West Philadelphia in the late 50's early 60's and giving the driver that tiny silver coin to head to her job at Gimbles Department Store in Center City. This is one momento I will not part with.

My mother, who loved nature, had placed a dead bluebird, carefully wrapped in a clear ziplock bag, in the chest freezer. Had it struck a window and died? Had she found it in the yard? Was she planning to make a drawing or photograph it? Or did she simply find it too lovely to throw away? I'll never know. It was weird and touching... and of course I threw it out. Sorry, mom!

Daughter1 came across her umbilical cord clamp when she was going through her remaining things in my house last weekend. I got them each a big storage box so that I could put their respective treasures and heirlooms in. "UGGHHH!!! it's still got dried CELLS on it!!!" Well, only *her* cells... Can't think what she was making such a fuss about.

She's kept the wristband instead.

What great stories here! I don’t have anything unusual, just something precious to me. When I was probably 5 or so my dad took us shopping for mother’s day. I found a lime green scarf with fuschia flowers painted on it, I thought it was beautiful. It was hideous and I remember my dad trying to talk me out of it, but I was convinced my mom would just love it. So we bought it and I happily presented it to her. My child nature moved on to other things and I never thought more of it. When mom died and I was sorting through her things there was the scarf, I was stunned and touched to see that she’d always kept such an ugly gift! The other thing I found was that she’d written the names of grandchildren on the bottom of many collectibles, no one knew she’d done it, her quiet way of passing something on

Some of this is hilarious... I think it is time to give some serious thought to purging more of my stuff!

When I was cleaning out my mother’s dresser, I found my baby brother’s first pair of eyeglasses (he was about 9 months old when he had to wear glasses due to lazy eye). I gave those to my brother, and we both smiled.

On top of my mom’s dresser was an empty plastic container (like what an individual serving of jello comes in). Inside the container was a tissue, and I almost threw out the entire item, but something told me that I needed to take the tissue out and check beneath it. When I did, you can imagine my surprise to find the wedding band of my mom’s oldest sister. Mom apparently inherited it from her sister several years before when my sweet aunt, who had no children of her own, had passed away. She and my mom were extremely close, so I was glad that I didn’t throw out the wedding band with the tissue!

My dad was an artist. In his last years, he painted on various pieces of paper that ended up in his room at a nursing care facility—paper placemats, greeting cards from friends, etc. Sometimes Dad would set one of his finished (or nearly finished) pieces on a table between newspapers and magazines. I had to make a point to look between every layer of newspaper whenever I was helping him pick up in his room. Sometimes I found lovely art work that I took to my brother to be framed. We have no idea how many paintings ended up in a dumpster (or in the home of one of the cleaning staff), since we didn’t do a daily purge for him.

When my mother-in-law died, my husband and his brother found wedding photos of her and a man who was not their father. They never knew their mother was married before she married their father! That was a real shocker!

My deceased grandmother in law kept a dead bat in her freezer for years, and also she was a hoarder of VHS tapes...it was hell going through all that stuff...

My MILs former partner selfishly got rid of 90% of her personal belongings before we had a chance to go through them so if she had anything unusual, we’ll never know.

What we did find was a side of her we didn’t know existed until she died. She had a huge trunk that, as far as we all knew, had family pictures and a few things from when her kids were little. Now, over the years she never seemed to appreciate anything anyone gave her. She would ask for receipts to return them. Or they wouldn’t be used. Some were regifted. I finally gave up and started giving her photo books & pictures of the grandkids for Christmas and flowers for her birthday. I figured she was even more disappointed with those things than all the other things we’d given her in the past. Well......when we went through that trunk, we realized she was an extremely sentimental person! That trunk was full of pictures, every card her children and grandchildren had ever given her, old school assignments, love letters to and from my FIL/her ex husband. She kept EVERYTHING! Then we found that she had a special wood box for each grandchild full of pictures of them, some of them had albums she was working on, plus trinkets and party favors from their baby showers and birthday parties and The photo books I made every year.
It was just really a surprise finding all that stuff, carefully stored. It really meant a lot to all of us actually. It was comforting. And we learned a lot about her......

I just finished cleaning out my parents house and could spend an hour listing the things I found! My favorites are:
- the cast my brother wore when he broke his hand at age 8 (he didn’t want it)
- our birth announcements from the 50’s (Which I had never seen)
- an incredible lacy dress with bonnet and panties Mom made for my 1st Easter
- cash tucked in cards, purses, pocket, and film canisters (always check! We found over $300 squirreled away)
- enough pencils, pens, markers and erasers to fit out an elementary school
- 5 gold pocket watches
- a receipt for materials for a hat rack my dad built in high school wood shop (I still use that)
- the toy Batman car my brother's couldn’t agree who owned (sold that on eBay and gave Mom the money)
- 3 sets of very old silver plated flatware that she never used
- a paper Cuban peso dated 1895
- a complete set of state quarters that "the kids might like to have" (the kids are all in their 30’s!)
- a knife sharpener with a deer antler handle

I could go on and on! The best thing is, whenever I show Mom these things she says "where did you find that?"

The only odd thing that I knew of which my mother possessed was a post mortem photo of my Great Uncle Hazzie (It was typical in those {1919-ish] days to snap a photo of the deceased, but I found it to be macbre!). Also we found a box of buttons that my mother kept from Depression era days/mindset.

While going through my mom's things I found a bathroom glass and soap dish that she was going to give me when I moved into my new home in 1989. I was divorced in 1991 and never moved into the home. My mom passed in 2010. She held onto that glass and soap dish for 21 years because she didn't want to me to be reminded of a tough time in my life. I treasure that soap dish and glass and I treasure my mom's protection from hurt and love for me.

Speaking of finding things. Do you ever find that synchronicities happen? My brother has been seriously ill in hospital for the last three mths. Today I was looking for something and opened a drawer where I've kept a lot of my mom's things. On the very top was an envelope with Bob's old report cards from when he was just a child. His birth records. Cards he had made for mom and my dad. Bob is schizophrenic and his grades really reflected this. I had always wondered if this is something that developed when he reached early adulthood or if he had it when he was a child.

So I was looking at this stuff and thinking I should give it to my other brother who has been doing most of the looking out for this brother as of late. Then the phone rang and it was him.

The weird thing is I looked at all mom's stuff and I never recall seeing this envelope before and there it was right on top of all the other stuff. I must have pored over all of mom's stuff a hundred times and do not recall ever seeing this envelope.

Strange indeed.

OK, this is a Weird one, but after my parents passed, only 14 months apart, 5 of 6 of us kids gathered at their place (which was one of my sisters MIL apartment attached to their home) to go through their things and divide up their belongings. It was to be a fairly simple job, as we had already moved and downsized them 3 times and they had previously given the majority of their collectables to us, but it was time to finally clear out my sisters place.

My eldest brother could not be there for some reason, so a few things were put aside for him, but we did come across Ahem.... my Dad's Penis Pump kit, a full on medical device Rx'd by his Urologist and purchased from a Medical Supply store. I thought it sweet that my Dad thought enough of my Mom and their romantic life that he wished to do everything he could do to maintain their sex life one it became difficult due to his Prostate issues. Still, it produced a laugh to all of us.

Anhoo, after the laughter finally subsided my younger brother decided that it would be funny to put a post mortem "note from the grave" from my Dad to our eldest brother "gifting" him his Penis Pump, as he "knew it would come in handy for him one day soon". We all laughed our Azz's off for a long time as it was something my Dad would have thought funny too and would have got a kick out of, but my Mom would have been mortified! It brought some real laughter to what was a somber situation, but was exactly what we needed, and a real bonding moment for all of us. We are all super close anyways, so it is a great memory and one we bring up every once in a while, Notes from the grave! Lol!

LOL! Stace!

My story, mom had not passed, actually far from it. She and dad divorced when I was young. She dated, her mid-40's. When she was out one night, I went snooping through her dresser. Found a diaphragm, shocking! Actually, shook me up a bit. I must have been 14 or so. Well it was in the drawer then....

Mom dated the minister that married her and my dad for awhile. They once went out of town for a weekend, I was probably 16 by that time. So, I decided to check to see if the diaphragm was there. Nope!

She had great admiration for this minister. He was cool because he smoked. How times change!

No biggie, but I no longer possess "the Button Box." My mother was planning on gifting it to my 46 year-old daughter (who wouldn't know what to do it) or my 21 year-old niece (who also wouldn't know what to do with it.) But you're all correct - the Button Box would be used in a classroom of older kids (not young ones who may put the buttons in their mouths).

There's a closet in our house that Mother used as a gift closet,keeping gifts in it,she might give away later.
Well one day recently,I decided to look way up on the top shelf where Iv'e never looked before and I found a bag with a note inside.The note says"Confiscated from the children",meaning the 3 of us kids and when I looked to see what was in the bag ,it had nasty boxed jokes we used to buy at Spencer Gifts in it as well as a doodle cover that was an elephant with a place for the "trunk" and a big clothespin with 2 people doing it when it clasped together.
I'd forgotten about some of those things but I'm gonna blame my 2 brother's when we go through everything together....IF we ever do.

Found a bag of hair in mother's belongings. She must've told the funeral guy to save it for her when my sister died in '89. Gross & disturbing. (Not the 'parting gift' I was hoping for, lol).