Recently, I asked the BuzzFeed Community members to tell us the wild or life-changing thing that they learned about their family or a family member when someone was on their deathbed! And, needless to say, people had some truly interesting stories to share!
Here are just some of the intriguing deathbed confessions people made to their family members:
1. "My paternal grandmother had stage 4 pancreatic cancer, her health got really bad really fast, and we all knew she didn’t have much time left. On one of our visits, she asked for everyone but my father [to] stay [out of] the room. When he came out, he was in tears. Turns out my grandmother revealed to him that she was told he wouldn’t be able to have kids due to a surgery he had to have when he was a kid. She never told him, but obviously, he did end up having children, hence me. Turns out my mother cheated on my father, and no one ever knew until my grandmother dropped this confession. We did a paternity test and everything. It was true."
—[anonymous]
2. "My grandmother became a widow at a relatively young age, and for most of her life, she was frugal because she had to 'scrap by' with my grandpa's Social Security. Before her death, she told my father where to look while cleaning out her house because she had 'hid a little bit of money' around. When we went to her house, there was a lot of hidden money everywhere; hidden in coat pockets, jars, under mattresses, etc. Long story short, turns out my grandpa had invested in some properties early in their marriage that she later ended up selling for a large profit — but because she grew up during the Depression, she saved every penny she could and lived well below her means."
—[anonymous]
3. "That my grandpa's brother wasn't dead, they had just stopped talking to each other after their dad died (which happened right after I was born, so 25 years). I found out when my grandma and I ran into him at the hospital while my grandpa was on hospice care; his brother came to say goodbye to him. Everyone in our very large family acted like my grandpa's entire family was dead since I was born. Also found out that my grandpa's name was actually Joseph, not Paul."
4. "My dad worked in a Black Ops program run by the CIA. He was an engineer, working in the missiles and space division of Lockheed in California. We knew he had a high-security clearance because we had to leave messages with the security office if we needed to talk to him, but it never seemed weird. He worked on a satellite retrieval system for what was supposed to be a research satellite. In 1994, the project was unclassified, and I discovered that his work was on a spy satellite that was so good that it helped end the Cold War."
"He had some of the parachute straps from the first air snatch of the satellite nose cone (and the rest are in the Smithsonian). Today those satellite photos are being used by scientists to assess the impact of climate change. I wish he had lived long enough to see the impact of his work."
5. "My mom had been dead for over a decade at this point, when my dad was hospitalized and terminal with colon cancer. I think him knowing it was near the end, he told me he needed to talk about something important: his 'special friend' I'll call 'John' and how he wanted him pallbearer because of how much he meant to him. My dad never came out and said he was gay, but he said that he and John had been 'close' for most of their lives and that after my mom's death, they essentially got to be together."
"I had a lot of emotions upon hearing that; anger at him for probably cheating on my mom, sadness that he could never be fully honest with himself and the world, and a sense of happiness for him that he did get some time to be with someone he loved. Even if it was a secret. After my dad passed, John did serve as a pallbearer at his funeral, but we never saw or spoke to him after that. I still often think about how there is someone else out there with such a deep connection with my dad and knows a whole other side of him."
—[anonymous]
6. "As kids we were always told that the beautiful jewelry my grandma's dad had gifted her when she was younger was purchased after he returned home from World War II. When my grandma was dying, she told us it wasn't purchased, but that it was stolen from multiple Italian families when his unit landed there in the war! It's now boxed up and has never been opened since she passed away. Doesn't seem right to have it in sight."
7. "My great-grandma had a serious stroke and was rushed to the hospital. The whole time (after she became OK), she never revealed why she had the stroke. The doctor kept trying to ask her, 'Why do you think you had the stroke?' or 'Did anything provoke you to have the reaction?' just so that they can prevent it from happening again. But, she was darn stubborn and didn’t spill anything. Soon, she became really sick in the hospital and was, well, on her deathbed. My dad was next to her, crying of course, and she told him in a very weak voice. 'I had the stroke because your cousins were fighting viscously at each other...'"
"'...they screamed and clawed right in front of me. I couldn’t bear to move, I was frozen. They were fighting about my will, as they kept me captive in the house. They knew I was going to die, and they started fighting about who will get my money. But you (dad’s name) are more deserving, you’ll inherit what's in my will.' After that, she said her goodbyes and (thank goodness) died peacefully. She was such a sweet soul. But this story did shock the rest of the family, and those cousins went no contact with us. Crazy story, right, LOL."
8. "I was with my great-grandmother when she died, although I’d only gone to help my mom and grandma through the process; I wasn’t close with her as she’d always lived far away. I was reading next to her at one point, and she piped up and said, 'You know Robin was my niece, and not my sister, right?' I had no idea what she was talking about and just said, of course. She passed the next day, and a week or so later, I told my mom what she said, and she said, 'What, really?!' In the style at the time, when her older sister got pregnant as a teenager, her parents sent her away and then raised the baby as her sister."
—[anonymous]
9. "That my grandma was a lesbian and has for all intents and purposes been married to a woman ever since her husband’s death."
—[anonymous]
10. "I was visiting my paternal grandmother on her deathbed (she had a terminal illness) along with my father and two younger sisters, when she asked to talk to me privately for a few minutes. My father and sisters left the room so we could talk about whatever she wanted to talk about. I just stood there for a moment and then asked what she wanted to talk about. She paused, looked up at me, and said, 'Your grandfather isn’t actually your grandfather.' I was clearly shocked, because if this was true, why had she never told anyone, and why would she tell me of all people?"
"She went on and said (I don’t quite remember the exact words), 'All of my children are from a previous marriage. I married the man you know as your grandfather when your aunt was 1, and your father was an infant.'
I then asked her why she was telling me. She then said, 'I didn’t want your father or aunt to know, and your siblings are too young. Please, don’t tell either of my children.' (She then explains how their real father was a narcissist and overall rude bastard, and they don’t need to meet him or even think of him.) I don’t remember if there was more conversation, as this happened about six years ago. But I’ve kept true to my word, and my dad and aunt still don’t know. I do feel bad keeping this away from them, but considering my grandmother said their real father was a narcissist, I’m not too deterred by keeping the secret. I hope that I’m making the right choice by trusting my grandmother, and hope their real father died before my grandma."
—[anonymous]
11. "The story goes my grandma married her high school sweetheart who left her for another woman. All my dad knew was his name from the birth certificate and that he was military. My grandma moved in with her brother after the divorce. When my great-uncle passed, I found a ledger in his desk with random dates from the late '50s and payments to my grandma's ex-husband. My grandma and I were extremely close so I asked her about it."
"My sweet, soft-spoken grandma flipped out. We never spoke of it again UNITL 2020 when she was in the hospital. The night before she passed, she told me her secret. Her high school sweetheart did, in fact, leave her but two years BEFORE my dad was born. She met a Marine while she was working for the studios, they had a fling, he shipped out, the end result was my dad. Unwed mothers were still taboo so my uncle paid her ex-husband to put his name on my dad's birth certificate. My dad now knows but has no desire to pursue it."
12. "Found out my dad had several million dollars saved up without telling anyone."
—[anonymous]
13. "A few months before he was gone, my grandfather told my mom that he wasn't her or her little sister's real father. He had met my grandmother after her first husband deserted her in the mid-'50s. My mother and my aunt were around 3 and 1 years old when my grandfather came into their lives. My grandparents married pretty quickly and decided it would be better never to tell them. It's funny because both my mom and aunt look a lot like my grandfather, which makes me think is why they and nobody else ever even questioned it."
—[anonymous]
14. "When my uncle died, the family member in charge of the estate found money hidden everywhere. In the mattress, coffee cans in the pantry, in the walls! My uncle who never had children left 'a little cat food money.' It was thousands of dollars!"
—[anonymous]
15. And lastly, "Not deathbed, but at my grandfather’s funeral, his secret second family showed up. He had a wife and three kids no one knew about."
—[anonymous]
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.