Monday, January 23, 2017

What was the strangest thing you found cleaning out your parents’ house after they died?

My parents are still alive, but I helped clean out my grandparents’ home back when I was in college. After about the third day, my parents, my sister, and I met in the living room, and decided that there needed to be a new rule: We could ask what, but we should not ask why. It took considerable brainpower just determining what some of these things were . . . trying to figure out why my grandparents had them, that was really just too much.

They grew up during the Great Depression, and then became quite wealthy and materialistic. If you found something, you would also find the original packaging, and receipt. There were multiple backup sets of luxury items that were never opened, such as gold silverware and nearly two dozen place settings of extremely expensive china, still sealed in the box.

The oddest find, though, was in the basement. For 55 years, my grandfather had gotten the weekly newspaper from his hometown in Illinois mailed to him. He kept every one. (We’re just grateful it wasn’t a daily paper!) In the middle of this stack, we found a woman’s corset—and not in my grandmother’s size, either.

That was when we met up in the living room and created the new rule.



Read other answers by Andy Kerr on Quora: Read more answers on Quora.

from Quora http://ift.tt/2jPmXHS

No comments:

Post a Comment