In my work with widows and others who are grieving the loss of loved ones, clients have reported the discovery of some difficult secrets when going through the possessions of a deceased family member.

I find myself at a season of life when I have thought about this more lately. I like to consider myself  “an open book”, but am I really? Are the thoughts floating around in my head that I have often committed to paper, things that won’t come as surprises to my kids, or will these thoughts upset them long after I am gone? Will my private documents just confirm a picture of the mother they knew all of their lives?

Or will my revelations cause them to question their own perceptions and understanding of the world. I don’t think that will happen, but then, maybe I should give that some further consideration.

A friend raised the topic a few years ago when she asked me if I would be willing to go to her home and quickly remove certain things, should something happen to her. They were things she wouldn’t want her kids to see or know about. At first I was taken aback. I wondered what sort of secret life this friend might have that she wouldn’t want to be revealed. Then I thought about stories I have heard from clients and friends.

The writer, Garbriel Garcia Marquez, in Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life, says, “All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.” 

I have worked with widows who discovered after their husbands died, that the person they thought was a loving and faithful life partner had conducted a long term affair with another woman, with a man, or with several people.  Imagine the shock and angst when someone discovers that, or that a loved one was a pedophile, a thief, or ran up a huge amount of debt of which the spouse or partner was unaware.  I have known people who learned of secret alliances with dangerous and radical groups they would not have guessed about in a million years. Others  found their homes mortgaged to the hilt and had to face the news that they were about to lose their homes.

Sometimes the shock comes in the form of a Last Will and Testament a survivor did not know existed.  They might learn that assets assumed to be theirs on the death of a spouse or partner, were left to someone else.  Sometimes property like valuable coin collections purchased with a couple’s joint funds were already sold or given away to another family member prior to the death.

Then there are the perhaps less drastic, but potentially emotionally impactful things like old love letters. Somewhere in my attic, are the letters my late first husband and I wrote to each other early in our courtship, during a brief period of separation when we truly thought we were star-crossed lovers. Perhaps the mice that sometimes share our 1851 farmhouse have already taken care of this and chewed them up. There is nothing terrible in the letters. In fact, the adult kids might enjoy reading them, but is this something I want? Is this something my co-correspondent would have wanted? He died so suddenly and so young,  that he didn’t get a chance to live to an age when he might make such decisions.

Do I want anyone else to read the letters to myself and journals I wrote during some highly difficult times? Aside from sharing my own struggles and feelings, they reveal things about others in my world that are part of their own private histories.

After my mother-in-law passed away, we learned some heavy-duty things about her own life struggles. We had no clue of these earlier. We discovered she had placed a daughter for adoption. She had other secrets she had kept from only some family members, but not from others, which is always a dangerous thing. It pained us to consider how she must have suffered from keeping so many secrets.

It is true, of course, that we can’t control things from beyond the grave (as far as I know). Perhaps this isn’t something we need to be concerned about. Yet I have seen a lot of suffering because of secrets and distressing information revealed after someone’s death.  I know that when something like this occurs, it can greatly complicate and prolong the misery of the grief process. It can cause survivors to remain stuck in anger and regret. It can cause them to doubt themselves and their ability to evaluate and understand others, making them overly guarded in interactions with family and friends, or even seriously intimacy-averse.

So what do I advise? Well, as you may know by now, coaches don’t like to advise. We prefer to create awareness and promote new insight in others. We know that most people already have the answers within themselves and just need to clarify a few things and make some changes.

Are there things you are not proud of in your past? (Who doesn’t have something?) Are there amends that need to be made, or at least disclosures and open and honest conversations? I don’t advocate a confess-all festival.  That is rarely productive.  Still, I think there comes a time when we need to reflect on our lives and consider how our actions have affected, or will affect others.

Are there things you have written in the past that were recorded in times of anger, or in  the midst of trials?  Are these things that would serve no purpose but to cause your loved ones distress and would not enhance their lives or their understanding of your past? Are there legal affairs you still need to get in order, or to set right, so as not to leave a big mess for those you care about, rather than keeping your plans and intentions a big secret?

I don’t know what goes on in your heads, or in your lives, but you might wish to ponder some of this.  We can’t go back and change the past, but we can think about the legacy we might be leaving. Is it what you want to leave?

How do survivors cope with painful discoveries like some of the ones I have mentioned here? I have worked with people who were absolutely devastated and who had to rebuild their trust and find brand new coping skills.  That’s probably a topic for another blog post!

Iris Arenson-Fuller is a credentialed Grief & Loss Transformation/Life Reinvention Coach who connects people to hope and purpose, and helps them through and beyond grief, loss and other tough relationship and personal crises. 

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