Going through my mom’s old paperwork

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My parents split up when I was 8, but got an annulment and divorced when I was around 18 or so. My dad died in 2001, and mom died in 2019 when I was 52.

My brother and I were going through her things, we found her petition to get the annulment. In it she made her case, and had her sister, my favorite aunt, write a supporting letter. So basically, it's a document with intent to persuade, so it put my dad and the marriage in the worst possible light. The thing that bothered me was that my aunt said when my mom got back from the honeymoon, she asked how was it, and my mom replied, "I think I made a mistake."

ugh. All this time I thought they had started out happy, then it went downhill...I guess I thought when my brother and I were born, they were still happy. That was a bummer.

Anyways, my brother and I decided to get rid of it all. No one else needs to read that; descendants won't know them and it would just be for curiousity's sake.

My grandmother was divorced amicably, widowed, then divorced not amicably. It was actually a comfort to me during my own divorce to know why she left her terrible third marriage with little kids and everything.

[Anonymous]

Just moved my mom to assisted living from a big house. So sad that all the stuff she loved was just junk. Most horrifying finds were her sex toy and the letter she saved from an old (married) boyfriend instructing her on how to clean out his family’s checking account if he died. I knew he was a creep, but jeez!

[Anonymous]

My mom is in her 90s now and was married to my dad (who died a few years ago) for over 50 years. They got married in the late 1950s/early 1960s. My mom recently told me about how my dad made her go to the gynecologist before he proposed and get a paper affirming that she was a virgin, and then go back for another affirmation after he proposed and right before they got married.

Whoa. I mean, the stuff that happened back then that women just went through as though it were normal. My mom looks back at this and is kind of horrified and embarrassed, but ... she did it. It puts a different perspective on their marriage for me, for sure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People don’t keep paper copies of things anymore…

Many do. Stop projecting your own experience onto the entire population. Bubble boy.

And some of us don’t - except for very important things like birth certificates, marriage license,
Deed to the house. And in some ways that is sadder. Our kids will log in and pay a few last bills and then poof! It’s all gone like it never happened. And put grand kids aren’t going to randomly scroll through digital photos.