β€œHe carried this secret with him for so long and died without ever having told anyone. It must have haunted him.”

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Note: Discussions of death, suicide, and abuse.

"The real kicker was one time when I was doing a family tree on one of those [ancestry] sites, it kept suggesting a public family tree I did not recognize. Turns out it was his other family."

"Fully expecting to find naked pictures of my grandma (but not wanting to be the one who accidentally sold a cabinet full of cash or something), I popped the lock on the drawer with a letter opener. It was full of pictures of naked ladies who were NOT my grandmother. Probably a dozen different women. Some of them were obviously taken inside my grandparents' house. Most looked like they were from the '50s and '60s, just judging from the hairstyles and shoes. These were not professional boudoir shots, either. It was straight-up nasty porn. I threw all the pictures away and never told anyone in my family about it."

"Since I was the first to find out, I was tasked with telling my mother. I called her up, and she basically said, 'Meh, your dad was bound to have some more skeletons in the closet that we didn't yet know about.' The whole thing makes me incredibly sad when I think about it. Sad for this guy who didn't have a dad (he had been looking for him on and off since he was 17). But also sad for my dad that he carried this secret with him for so long and died without ever having told anyone. It must have haunted him."

"There was Β£250,000 in there that our whole family didn't know existed, nor where it came from. I mean, I guess it's possible that he saved his wages over a long period of time to eventually have that amount. Possible, but extremely unlikely as he was a builder and not particularly wealthy. We all got a cut."

"We'd always known he served in WWII, but like many men, he never talked about it. We learned after his passing that he'd signed up when circumcision was still required, and he volunteered for the procedure so he could go fight. Once enlisted, they put his carpentry skills to use building bridges, but for the most part, he spent his time making coffins to send boys home."

Here's some photos of OpaΒ πŸ₯ΉΒ (and his coffin), provided by the original poster.

"He was a control freak with all of us. I don't know why he did it."

"He talked a lot about my daughter – his niece β€” and how I was being the daddy she deserved and how proud he was of me. He wished that he and I had a dad like me when we were growing up. Instead, he had me. I did what I could. I was only eight years older and a child raising a child. He missed our dad a lot because he had finally started to change after years of abuse, but then he died. He also talked of all the times he thought about suicide and how he came close to doing it but never did follow through. I miss my brother so much."

"The sister went back and let the family know what she had seen. My mom had the babies, put them up for adoption, and returned home to an icy, silent reception. The reason for her absence was never spoken of. I didn't find out until many years after her death."

"There was one true thing: his cousin who worked at NASA really did. I guess that was already interesting enough that he didn't have to make that up. As to why he did this, it was never clear. He didn't lie about other stuff, as far as I know. His real family was on the other side of the country and didn't want to visit while he was sick and didn't come to the funeral either. The whole thing was sad and strange."

Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.