36 Genuinely Heart-Stopping Secrets That I Can’t Believe We Published

6.

“That my grandfather poisoned my grandmother and that my mother knew. My uncle (her younger brother) helped cover it up by getting rid of the evidence. There were odd rumblings about what my grandmother died of as well as how quickly, but I ignored it because my family was full of gossips.”

“I only recently found out about it, as I had a box of my mother’s from before she died. … I found a letter from my mom in an envelope addressed to me with the date of my grandfather’s death under it.

It turns out that my grandfather poisoned my grandmother after she confessed to abusing my mother for nearly all of her childhood during a fight they were having. He used some old rodent poison he’d had in the basement from the ’50s and slipped it in her tea. She eventually became ill and showed signs of dementia; she was put into specialized care, where they diagnosed her at that time with environmentally caused ALS. She passed shortly after going into care.

He confessed to my mom and her younger brother when it was suggested by the care facility that he get his pipes, groundwater, and soil tested. He acted agitated, which my mom picked up on and pressed him about later.

My mom expressed a lot of guilt over it. She felt horrified that her father, in her eyes, killed for her, and she also felt a lot of guilt for not feeling sadness for her mother.

I’m not sure how I feel about it at all. Everyone involved is long dead, so there is no justice to seek, and I only remember my grandmother in vague terms, as rough, mean, and scary. Whereas my grandfather was a stern but loving man who taught me many things and loved his kids and grandkids. I ended up burning the letter just because I felt like my mom would’ve wanted that.”

—u/skinflakesasconfetti

Read 23 more secrets people always suspected but didn’t find the truth about until later here.