Exposing People’s Secret Possessions
These shocked folks discovered a secret possession amongst someone else's belongings. From shocking letters to scandalous photos, some things are better left unseen.
1. Wish I Hadn't Seen That
When my current husband and I were still engaged but getting ready to combine households, I was deleting a bunch of files from his computers so we could sell them. He had some pictures of his ex-wife and him on there (nothing racy or anything like that). But one picture caught my attention.
It was a close-up of my husband with his ex, nothing special at all—except the absolute happiness that exuded off him. It stopped my heart for a second. His eyes, his smile, all of it.
He had been with his first wife since he was 15 years old. They were high school sweethearts and had two children together. They were married for 20 years before she told him she was lost. She had met someone else.
I had never seen him look so happy as he had in that picture.
It didn’t make me think he didn’t love me or that he would always love her more, I just wish I had known him like that.
2. Missed Prescription
I had married a sweet young lady from England who had two children from a previous marriage. One rainy weekend, we were snuggled on the sofa while I was reading a book she had on the Kings and Queens of England.
A folded bit of paper fell out onto my lap.
My wife looked at it, a bit puzzled, and said, “Oh, Dr Jones was my doctor when I was pregnant with Kim. He gave me that for morning sickness and I lost it. I must have left it in the book". When I read the prescription, my jaw DROPPED.
The paper was a doctor’s prescription for a drug called Thalidomide. Although its use in the USA had been banned, it was prescribed in Britain for morning sickness.
Thousands of babies born to mothers that had used it lost their lives in their first year, and many had severe deformities.
Our daughter is now a healthy woman because her mother had used a prescription as a bookmark and lost it.
3. A Secret Cash Stash
I knew a 42-year-old man who was a very successful dentist. His wife worked with him at his office. They were both very good-looking and physically fit. They looked like Ken and Barbie. One day, the dentist dropped onto the kitchen floor.
His wife immediately did CPR, but it didn’t help.
She would later be told that he had had a massive heart attack and was probably gone before he hit the floor. At that age, he had not been thinking about the end of his life and had not made any preparations.
He had many secrets that his wife would learn, and she was the defendant in several lawsuits after he passed.
She found $30,000 in cash in their closet. She never found out where it came from or what it was for. A year later, I asked her what she would say to her husband if he were still alive. Her response made my blood run cold. Without hesitating, she said that she would take his life herself.
4. Mementos From Another Time
My wife is disabled. When she became very ill and could no longer work she brought home all of her scientific papers, laboratory reports and summaries, piles of material on immunology, rheumatology, genetics, and certain specific childhood diseases.
They took up several file drawers.
After a few years, I asked her if I could throw them away. She said she still wanted to keep them. After another decade, I decided that I would throw them out anyway.
By this time she could no longer read, having lost control of the muscles in her eyes that she needed to scan lines of text.
I was careful to examine each paper just in case there were some that ought to be saved. When I got to the bottom of one of the file drawers, I found a letter that stopped me in my tracks. It was from a young man she dated before we met.
Our lives had become so tragic, so ravaged by illness and shattered dreams. I could not bear to discard this fragment of her life, saved from when she was young and healthy and full of hope and romance. I put everything back as it was.
