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28 Secrets About People That Surfaced After Their Death And May Have Changed The Way Their Loved Ones Looked At Them
People don't like to think about death. It's something far away in the distance, we tell ourselves, something that happens to others who are a lifetime away from where we are.
It's only when death comes close to us — when someone close to us gets sick, or even worse, passes away — that everything changes. We suddenly realize how fragile life is, and how finite time is.
But sometimes, we discover a bit more. Whether it's a deathbed confession or people just piecing information together, we learn something new about the one who has passed away, too. Truth has a tendency to come out.
Redditor u/inthe801 recently posted a question for other platform users: "What is something shocking you found out about a friend or family member after they died?" And yeah, they responded.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
My grandfather was very wealthy and I found out after he passed that he anonymously paid for hundreds of funerals for children in minority, low-income parts of our town.
Bored Panda got in touch with u/inthe801 to talk about the Redditor's now-viral post (which, at this point, has nearly 20,000 upvotes) and they agreed to have a little chat about it.
"The idea for it popped into my head when some of my family secrets surfaced as a result of using those DNA genealogy websites," u/inthe801 told us. "A relative found out that the man she thought was her dad wasn't actually her biological father. Also, I knew someone who had cancer and asked his pastor to [forgive his internet browsing history] while laying in his deathbed."
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#2
My grandad was a farmer his whole life. Every animal loved him. We'd go to a new place and dogs would be coming straight to him, horses would cuddle with him. He just had a charm with them. When cleaning out his closet and digging in his pockets to make sure nothing of value was thrown in the wash, we found grains, bits of dried meats, dog treats, bits of old carrot (for the horses). Man's been bribing animals with food all this his life.
After going through the replies their post has received, u/inthe801 said it seems like most people have secrets about their sex life and the abuse they've endured.
"Judging from my personal experience, I think most people do not live with major secrets, but I do find it interesting to hear stories about those who do," the Redditor added. "Plus, there seems to be someone like that in pretty much every family."
#3
My dad gave up a 100% fellowship for a math PhD in order to work to provide for an unanticipated pregnancy (me). He really wanted to teach and he was a natural. In the 60 years I knew him, he never mentioned the PhD or fellowship opportunity. Not once. I found out going through his papers after his death.
However, the next time someone asks you "Can I tell you a secret?", you may want to think twice before agreeing to hear it. According to social psychologist Michael Slepian, PhD, an associate professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School who studies the psychology of secrets, being confided in is a double-edged sword.
"The bad news is that when people share their secrets with us, we feel like we have to guard them. The more people are preoccupied by that secret, or feel they have to hide it on behalf of the confidant, the more burdensome it is," he said.
#4
I met all 4 of my mom's boyfriends at her funeral. It was a surprise to them and myself.
But on the bright side, those shared confidences can be a boon to bonding. "When people confide in us, we take it as an act of intimacy that can bring us closer," Slepian added.
Secrets are universal. Almost everyone has something to hide (though, of course, not all secrets are of the deep and dark type). But until recently, psychological scientists hadn't spent much time exploring how keeping stuff from others affects us personally. Slepian himself got his start studying secrets indirectly—he had been researching metaphors; looking at the ways people use language about physical experiences to describe abstract concepts. Eventually, he became intrigued by the metaphor of being "weighed down" by a secret. "I wondered if it was just a linguistic thing that people do, or if it reflected something deeper," he said.
#5
After he died, found out dad served in Vietnam as a combat medic. Kinda explains a) why he never said anything about it b) was so resistant to me enlisting at 17 and c) had really good first aid skills. He was also married twice before meeting my mom and published a heap of fiction and non fiction books.
"For decades, secrecy research focused on the effects of concealment. But I couldn't find any studies that systematically looked at what secrets people keep, how they keep them or how they experience secrets on a day-to-day basis," the social psychologist said. "So, we started at the beginning, with the most basic questions we could ask."
Slepian and his colleagues identified 38 common categories of secrets that people keep about themselves, ranging from infidelity and illegal behavior to pregnancy and planned surprises for others. And those categories held up across study populations, which included participants drawn from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and random picnickers recruited from New York City’s Central Park.
#6
Great grandma lived in a boarding house while great grandpa was a traveling salesman. There was a nicely dressed man who would come through on business like clockwork. He thought 4 year old grandma was adorable and would watch her for great grandma if she needed to run to the store. He suddenly stopped coming around and a few weeks later great grandma saw his picture in the paper. Turns out, she had been letting Pretty Boy Floyd babysit her kid.
"We all keep the same kinds of secrets," Slepian said. "About 97% of people have a secret in at least one of those categories, and the average person is currently keeping secrets in 13 of those categories."
It's hard for people to get those secrets off their minds. The same research showed that people's minds wander to their secrets far more often than they actively try to conceal their secrets from others. And although the frequency of concealment didn’t seem to have much effect on well-being, the more people’s minds wandered to their secrets, the worse off they were. "It's not how much you hide a secret that’s harmful, but how often you find yourself thinking about it," Slepian said.
Which makes deathbed confessions perfectly understandable. We get rid of our biggest burdens to leave this world in peace.
#7
We found a sex swing in my little Catholic grandma’s attic.
#8
My great-grandfather had not, in fact, been eaten by a bear on Mt. Rainier (he was a park ranger). Instead, he’d been cheating on my great-grandmother and was summarily run out of town by her brothers. He moved to Alaska and nobody knew what had become of him until we located his grave, many decades later.
#9
It's not an unpleasant thing by any means, but it was definitely a surprise.
My grandfather passed away at the start of 2020, and he was a beloved man by his family and community. I think it was my aunt who told the story at the funeral, but it was about when he was stationed in Japan serving in the United States Air Force.
One night he found an airman trying to assault a young Japanese woman who did their laundry. My grandfather was raised in a home with an abusive father figure and did not tolerate any form of cruelty to women or children. He beat the man within an inch of his life, and was sent to a different camp for six weeks.
A similar story I already knew growing up was how he did a similar thing to a man who was beating his children in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Our family jokingly called it "Walt-Mart" from then on. (his first name was Walter)
#10
My dad passed away in an accident four years ago, and it totally broke my mom and siblings. He and I never really got along, so I was sad but didn't take it nearly as hard as my family. A year after he passed, my mom gave me his old desktop when my computer died. I found out that he'd been cheating on my mom for years when I stumbled onto the folder where he saved every chat log, picture, video, etc. Most of them were only online, but he met up with one woman while he was out of town 'for work.' I've never told my family and don't think I ever will.
#11
My grandmother dated Mr. Rogers in high school.
#12
My great grandpa on my dad's side lived to be 101.
He was the pinnacle of health for his entire life. Ate a very good diet with basically zero sugar, got regular exercise, and had all his mental functions and senses even in his old age. The man was still walking everywhere and taking busses on his own until literally the day he died.
He passed due to medical complications after a broken hip from a fall when he tripped on some steps. After he was gone, my family went to clear out the house and get everything in order. My dad opened a drawer to find a hidden stash full of chocolate bars and wrappers. The dude was so proud of his health that he felt the need to hide a sweet treat from his own family.
#13
My grandpa had a secret family that he kept up with our whole lives and never said a word about. There were graduation pictures, Christmas cards, the whole deal. Completely blew our minds
#14
I took care of my dad before he passed, and also handled his finances afterwards (I am the youngest of four). Come to find out my parents were divorced well before I would have been conceived. That plus the fact that I have blonde hair and blue eyes and all my siblings have dark hair and brown eyes, pretty much got the ball rolling and I started to ask questions of my mother and other family members. Mom initially denied it, but after I came back with Ancestry results showing another man was my biological father, she came clean.
#15
My great aunt and uncle never had kids so they treated me and my siblings like their grandkids. My aunt died ten years ago this year. So I was looking up her grave site so I can visit and saw a suggested link to a page about the grave of her child. I was very confused because I always just assumed they didn't want kids. Turns out they had a son who only lived to be a few months old. Made me sad to think that they did want kids and either couldn't or wouldn't after their son died.
Kathryn Baylis 3 years ago
Too bad many people didn’t—-and still don’t, for some reason—- consider fostering or adopting if they can’t conceive or lose a biological child. There are too many great kids out there who just need a loving home. I plan on fostering as soon as I can afford a larger home to accommodate a child.
#16
My wife’s uncle was a field agent for the CIA.
They would fly he and his wife to Italy where they would swap out their ID’s. Issue them their cover ID’s and then fly them out to pose as Italian Tourists.
#17
My great-aunt and great-uncle were siblings who had an incest relationship for most of their lives. They shared a house for the last decades of their lives which I always thought was very sweet, siblings caring for each other as they got older. Some of my best childhood memories are of visiting them and playing in their big yard with their dogs when I was a little kid. Years ago, I was talking with my father about how much I missed them when he just offhandedly told me that the two were in an incest relationship since they were kids. My mother confirmed, laughing at me like I was dumb for not knowing when it was obvious, which it apparently was since everyone in the family knew except me.
I posted about them before on my old account. Some recent family issues brought them back to mind again. All my good memories feel questionable now and I keep thinking of small details about them that make sense in a very different way. Honestly, I just wish I had never been told and could keep my memories of them as they were.
Firkin Dirkin 3 years ago
How would they want to be remembered? As having given you lovely memories. You were their normal world, where they weren't judged for their love being "wrong". Sad that your family took the purity of that away. Take back your memories - they deserve to be remembered as they existed for you..
#18
My grandpa lied on his immigration papers when he came over from Canada.
He was literally an illegal immigrant that was almost deported but got to stay because it was ww2 and they said they’d give him citizenship if he joined the military.
He spent his late dementia years talking about how “illegals were ruining America” Ironic.
Dave P 3 years ago
Even today, illegal immigrants can apply for the Military and if they get in, they get papers and a pathway to citizenship. It requires the Secretary of Defense to give a waiver. At the height of the Iraq war and recruitment was down, the Bush admin considered giving blanket waivers to get new recruits. They didnt at the end.
#19
My grandpa was always a very solid, Dutch, quiet, hard-working, Christian, gentle, honorable, honest, family-oriented guy.
Years after he died, I found some of his journals and had them translated into English.
NO. HE. WAS. NOT.
#20
Most shocking thing I found out was that he existed.
Researching my family tree (got back to 1550) found I had a direct uncle with Downs Syndrome. Poor f*cker was just shoved in a home and forgotten about 'till he died.
#21
My Uncle Jack was a quiet mild mannered man, with a good sense of humor. He looked like a slightly shorter, slightly slimmer Burl Ives. He was a successful psychiatrist, highly respected in his field.
Turns out he was also an OSS Agent during WW2. He never told anyone anything about what he did in the war. His two sons, an attorney and an Army ranger both asked him about it and he wouldn't tell them a word.
Devil's Advocate 3 years ago
A lot of people in the war never spoke of the horrors, likely because they daren't stop and remember them
#22
That the little book that my great-uncle kept in his front shirt pocket at all times was actually a collection of short stories on beastiality
tuzdayschild 3 years ago
Looking at the picture, I thought it would a story of how the book saved his life from a bullet.
Memere 3 years ago
I thought the same thing even though I know the pics BP uses aren't actual pics from the OP.
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Forrest McCanless 3 years ago
Woody Allen had a bit about his mother giving him a bullet as a child, that became his good-luck token always carried in his breast pocket. Years later, a bible, "hurled by a berserk evangelist out a third-floor window . . ."
Jeffrey Diehl 3 years ago
That is illegal in 48 or 49 states of the USA depending on how the vote goes in the Texas legislature later this month.
Riley Quinn 3 years ago
Reading and doing are two different things. As long as it wasn't used as an instructional manual.
InfectedVoice 3 years ago
In Marilyn Manson's autobiography that I read years ago him and his cousin found a load of their grandad's b*********y porn.
Hammer 3 years ago
I don't believe anything that piece of sh*t says (I'm sorry, no offense to you). He's just a walking propaganda machine, living for self aggrandizing and the belittling of others.
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tuzdayschild 3 years ago
Being against the abuse of animals makes one a moron. Duly noted.
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#23
I found out my father killed a guy when he was like 19. It was an argument over a girl, they gave him a choice of jail or the army. He chose the army then switched to the Air Force, was in for 20 years.
Not Proud British 3 years ago
I wonder how the family of the killed teenager felt about that? One man gets a new lease of life whilst the other gets their life taken away before it's barely begun. The killer can put his past deed to one side and pretend it never happened, but I bet the parents of the dead boy thought about him and remembered him every day. This is no happy ending.
#24
After my Grandma died we found a letter from an unnamed woman to my grandfather. It was a letter claiming that my grandfather was the father of her child. That if he wasn’t going to leave my grandmother for her she would abandon the baby with them and would have no part in raising it. With the death of my grandma no one else alive in my family had any idea what this letter really meant. Basically anyone who could give any clarification was already dead. Did my dad have another sibling? Was my uncle secretly not my grandma’s biological child? Was she lying and there was no child? We will never know.
#25
My spinster aunt had an affair with a married man years ago. Not particularly shocking by today's standards but I had always regarded her as this sweet-natured and celibate old maiden aunt. Turns out she had quite the colorful past which my family informed me of (after her death) when I was old enough to understand.
Kathryn Baylis 3 years ago (edited)
Auntie was a free spirit who lived life on her own terms. If I were you, and if she was still around, I’d be getting to know her better.
#26
That my grandfather changed his last name to hide from something (I think the law). My last name is something he thought was funny at the time. Nobody knows for sure what the original name is, or why he went on the run.
#27
My grandfather had an affair and had a son to prove it. We found this out through an ancestry test. I got to meet my half uncle, who lived one state over. He was a shy, but really nice dude. Only a handful of the family wanted to and met him. The majority don't know of his existence, and the other handful that know want nothing to do with him.
#28
That my dad had a brother who he lost in Bolivia at age 11, I just found out about a year ago when I was moving and found a old black and white picture of a kid. I asked my mom, “who’s this?” She causally says,” your dads brother who went missing when your dad and him were kids he was 11, im keeping it in case he wants to buy it back” Weird thing to not tell me for 20 years.
What do you think ?
Lily Mae Kitty 3 years ago
my grandfather ran an illegal speakeasy during prohibition. They owned an Italian restaurant and he made his own wine. The mafia, the Catholic priests, bishop, etc. and a few celebs frequented the place. My dad showed us the false wall in the vegetable cold room that was all shelves for bottles when we were kids. the wine press had a table over it. It's still a restaurant today but we haven't owned it since the 70s.
Raven DeathShade 3 years ago
Ah, speakeasies. I remember going there once with a good friend of mine, Rachel. I was around a hundred or so back then. Good times, good times.
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Ellen Ranks 3 years ago
Inherited a lot of books from my aunt who never married or had children. In one of them there was an erotic picture of her with another woman, touching each other up. It did not look like a staged thing. Looking at her hairstyle the pic was at least 40 years old. My favourite auntie was into ladies.
Rose the Cook 3 years ago
After my mother died I started researching her family since she was a very difficult person and we knew very few of her relatives. Seems anything she had told us was mostly lies. Anyway, one cousin we did know became very angry at the idea for unknown reasons.. On obtaining birth, death and marriage certificates for many relatives it turned out said cousin was born 27 months after her mother's husband died. No big deal these days but she insisted she was quote, " Just overdue, they didn't induce late babies then."
Leo Domitrix 3 years ago
Even an elephant would be overdue at that point, no offense, but I have encountered that mentality. For example, my grandparents were married in (year) when in fact, no, they weren't, and my dad (their second child) was on the way when they did (assuming the first chid was really my grandfather's....) Like it would shock the world to find out my gran was the first hillbilly teen girl to get knocked up. (She wasn't.)
Load More Replies...
steven 3 years ago
We had a great aunt who had an affair with her brother in-law and became pregnant. She was sent overseas to Paris and no one ever mentioned her again. I only found this out when I found her name on a holocaust memorial in The Marais. She died in a concentration camp.
Annabelle 3 years ago
Wow that is really sad. What happened to her child?
Load More Replies... bonnyatlast 3 years ago
My Grandmother was a very sweet Christian lady. Storybook grandma like Aunt Bea on the Andy Griffith show. After she passed my mom and an Aunt were helping clean out her things as it was too upsetting for grandpa to do. I was helping and found a certificate that listed she had 4 children. My dad only had two brothers. He was the eldest, one brother was three years later then another a year after that. There was another brother that was stillborn between dad and the next brother. None of the family knew. Grandpa, who was a tall country sort that I mistook for Abe Lincoln when I was young, was still living and I asked him quietly about it. He didn't say anything but tears welled up in his eyes. The baby is in the family graveyard in a small town where they used to live.
Alexandru Bucur 3 years ago
My great-grandpa left for the US from what was then Austria Hungary in 1912. He didn't quite have the money for a passage on the ship he wanted, the "Titanic", so he had to board another ship. After setting up in the US, he sent money back to my great-grandma so she and their kids could join him, but she was too scared by the Titanic disaster to make the crossing, so she refused. He sent her money for several years, but she kept refusing. In the end he came back to what was now Romania in the late 1930s and died in the 1960s, and we found out through an ancestry website in the 2000s that while he was in the US he had married an American woman and had a second family. He had only come back to Romania because that relationship soured. Unfortunately, when we contacted them we found out the last of his kids had died a few years prior and the rest of the family weren't too interested in keeping up contact with the over the pond relatives...
Lauren Caswell 3 years ago
Every now and then a weird family secret leaks out that I've grown up my whole life not knowing, but explains so much. Another one was revealed last week by my mum. And every time I'm like "wait, what?!". Are they slowly telling me my family history, or are these things just the tip of a big ol iceberg waiting for me down the line. I'm hoping the former, so I can talk about it with them while they are still here
Yort 3 years ago
All my juicy family secrets involve people who haven’t died yet, but my aunt basically has been a lying $hit-stirrer for at least as long as I’ve been alive and my mom didn’t realize it for a long time. My mom’s strained relationship with her brother is almost entirely because of my aunt lying and gossiping respectively to my mom and my uncle - telling mom “he said this, he did this” and telling my uncle that my mom said and did things. I’m als 99% sure she’s lying about having breast cancer. There’s a number of weird, suspicious things about her cancer, but the top one is that her hyper religious son never once posted about it on Facebook, even though he’s posted about doing a “prayer tree” for other things.
D Peterson 3 years ago
I'm going to start going through my paperwork & photos so I can get rid of anything too interesting before I die.
Nora Chavez 3 years ago
My dad was a warehouseman for Central Van Lines. One day at work he saw Patty Hearst who was working as a day laborer as a dish packer in south Texas with a group of black men. A white woman with a group of black men??? He saw that the men with her noticed that he recognized her. He suddenly came home sick from work. Didn't tell us for years. Back then, as a person of color, you didn't call the cops. In south Texas he would have been arrested, as well.
Min Yoonji da Baddie 3 years ago (edited)
My dad's uncle is an assassin. No one knew until a recent family problem/ deportation came up and apparently he is involved somehow. He's not involved with the cartel or any gangs, he just works solo for money. That's all I was able to hear but there are also more relatives on my dad's side that are in the same time of groups/business as his uncle.😬
BleeBloo 3 years ago
When my AH brother died in 1988, he was still just an AH, he was a real piece of work. I won't go into details, but trust me the world is better of without him.
Lily Mae Kitty 3 years ago
my grandfather ran an illegal speakeasy during prohibition. They owned an Italian restaurant and he made his own wine. The mafia, the Catholic priests, bishop, etc. and a few celebs frequented the place. My dad showed us the false wall in the vegetable cold room that was all shelves for bottles when we were kids. the wine press had a table over it. It's still a restaurant today but we haven't owned it since the 70s.
Raven DeathShade 3 years ago
Ah, speakeasies. I remember going there once with a good friend of mine, Rachel. I was around a hundred or so back then. Good times, good times.
Load More Replies... Ellen Ranks 3 years ago
Inherited a lot of books from my aunt who never married or had children. In one of them there was an erotic picture of her with another woman, touching each other up. It did not look like a staged thing. Looking at her hairstyle the pic was at least 40 years old. My favourite auntie was into ladies.
Rose the Cook 3 years ago
After my mother died I started researching her family since she was a very difficult person and we knew very few of her relatives. Seems anything she had told us was mostly lies. Anyway, one cousin we did know became very angry at the idea for unknown reasons.. On obtaining birth, death and marriage certificates for many relatives it turned out said cousin was born 27 months after her mother's husband died. No big deal these days but she insisted she was quote, " Just overdue, they didn't induce late babies then."
Leo Domitrix 3 years ago
Even an elephant would be overdue at that point, no offense, but I have encountered that mentality. For example, my grandparents were married in (year) when in fact, no, they weren't, and my dad (their second child) was on the way when they did (assuming the first chid was really my grandfather's....) Like it would shock the world to find out my gran was the first hillbilly teen girl to get knocked up. (She wasn't.)
Load More Replies... steven 3 years ago
We had a great aunt who had an affair with her brother in-law and became pregnant. She was sent overseas to Paris and no one ever mentioned her again. I only found this out when I found her name on a holocaust memorial in The Marais. She died in a concentration camp.
Annabelle 3 years ago
Wow that is really sad. What happened to her child?
Load More Replies... bonnyatlast 3 years ago
My Grandmother was a very sweet Christian lady. Storybook grandma like Aunt Bea on the Andy Griffith show. After she passed my mom and an Aunt were helping clean out her things as it was too upsetting for grandpa to do. I was helping and found a certificate that listed she had 4 children. My dad only had two brothers. He was the eldest, one brother was three years later then another a year after that. There was another brother that was stillborn between dad and the next brother. None of the family knew. Grandpa, who was a tall country sort that I mistook for Abe Lincoln when I was young, was still living and I asked him quietly about it. He didn't say anything but tears welled up in his eyes. The baby is in the family graveyard in a small town where they used to live.
Alexandru Bucur 3 years ago
My great-grandpa left for the US from what was then Austria Hungary in 1912. He didn't quite have the money for a passage on the ship he wanted, the "Titanic", so he had to board another ship. After setting up in the US, he sent money back to my great-grandma so she and their kids could join him, but she was too scared by the Titanic disaster to make the crossing, so she refused. He sent her money for several years, but she kept refusing. In the end he came back to what was now Romania in the late 1930s and died in the 1960s, and we found out through an ancestry website in the 2000s that while he was in the US he had married an American woman and had a second family. He had only come back to Romania because that relationship soured. Unfortunately, when we contacted them we found out the last of his kids had died a few years prior and the rest of the family weren't too interested in keeping up contact with the over the pond relatives...
Lauren Caswell 3 years ago
Every now and then a weird family secret leaks out that I've grown up my whole life not knowing, but explains so much. Another one was revealed last week by my mum. And every time I'm like "wait, what?!". Are they slowly telling me my family history, or are these things just the tip of a big ol iceberg waiting for me down the line. I'm hoping the former, so I can talk about it with them while they are still here
Yort 3 years ago
All my juicy family secrets involve people who haven’t died yet, but my aunt basically has been a lying $hit-stirrer for at least as long as I’ve been alive and my mom didn’t realize it for a long time. My mom’s strained relationship with her brother is almost entirely because of my aunt lying and gossiping respectively to my mom and my uncle - telling mom “he said this, he did this” and telling my uncle that my mom said and did things. I’m als 99% sure she’s lying about having breast cancer. There’s a number of weird, suspicious things about her cancer, but the top one is that her hyper religious son never once posted about it on Facebook, even though he’s posted about doing a “prayer tree” for other things.
D Peterson 3 years ago
I'm going to start going through my paperwork & photos so I can get rid of anything too interesting before I die.
Nora Chavez 3 years ago
My dad was a warehouseman for Central Van Lines. One day at work he saw Patty Hearst who was working as a day laborer as a dish packer in south Texas with a group of black men. A white woman with a group of black men??? He saw that the men with her noticed that he recognized her. He suddenly came home sick from work. Didn't tell us for years. Back then, as a person of color, you didn't call the cops. In south Texas he would have been arrested, as well.
Min Yoonji da Baddie 3 years ago (edited)
My dad's uncle is an assassin. No one knew until a recent family problem/ deportation came up and apparently he is involved somehow. He's not involved with the cartel or any gangs, he just works solo for money. That's all I was able to hear but there are also more relatives on my dad's side that are in the same time of groups/business as his uncle.😬
BleeBloo 3 years ago
When my AH brother died in 1988, he was still just an AH, he was a real piece of work. I won't go into details, but trust me the world is better of without him.
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