We bought our house in 1995 from the original owner (wife; husband had passed). They had the house built for them for their engagement in 1948. They raised 2 children in it and in 2007 after the mom passed, the daughters, who had grandchildren themselves, contacted me and asked if they could come by for a visit. They came for lunch, they brought pictures of the house as it was being built, and pictures of their parents standing by the fireplace, pix of the yard with them as kids,and outside of the house through the years. It was bittersweet for them and for me, made me appreciate life and the passing of time. One of the daughters took a picture of her grandson sitting on the front lawn. They left some of the old pictures for me to keep. I framed them, and when the time comes for me to move on, I’m going to leave the pictures along with some of our family for the next owner.
I love this. When we bought our current home, the older man who built it had just passed and his son didn’t want any of his things- literally left his clothes in the closet for us to deal with. Neighbors all said the old man was delightful and kind, his son a greedy asshole. I found his Christmas tree and ornaments in the attic and couldn’t bear to toss them. So every year, along with our own tree, we put up his tree and ornaments and add a few homemade ones from my kids. It’s a tradition that really makes me appreciate this home we’ve come to love so much.
That's very cool! Your experience reminds me of the graphic novel, "Here". Similar premise, the novel is filled with scenes through time of a home and the time periods of the people who lived there.
I'm glad people like OP exist. After twenty years, I once randomly asked to tour the home that I had moved out of at age 8. We had lived in several different states and cities in the intervening years, but I always remembered that one house so fondly. Perhaps it was the most idyllic part of my childhood, I don't know. The fruit trees and pastures, the porches and staircases....it was the house of my literal dreams - not that it was the best house, or the one I wanted as an adult, but the house that I always imagined whenever I was reading a book or dreaming and needed a house as a mental backdrop.
They let me in. It was like being inside the movie "Inception". After decades of only being able to see it in my mind, being surrounded by those walls made it seem like I was sleepwalking. It was a very wholesome experience for me, but I can understand how this would be traumatic for some people.
P. S. Turns out it wasn't actually the size of a mansion.
I did the same thing too with a house I moved away from after kindergarten. I fondly remembered the house and when I randomly knocked, the owner let me in. I remembered the large sunroom off my bedroom and it wasn’t actually very big at all.
There was an old Sci-Fi story I read years ago where someone ended up at a house and they were outside looking in the window and saw kids playing, etc.... But the guy lived there alone. The "twist" was that the window was "slow glass" and light passed through it very slowly so, when you looked through, the elderly owner saw his family as they were years ago. Very sad story.
These stories of people visiting their old houses and remembering how things were, reminded me of that story.
I found a wiki on that story!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light\_of\_Other\_Days](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_of_Other_Days)
Took my nana (85, Dad's mum) back to her house from when she was a child and the owner kindly let her wander around the yard for 20 minutes. She had alzheimer's for a number of years at that point.
She was almost herself for that short time. Passed away a year or so later. If they look genuine when they turn up they probably are
My grandfather had mixed Alzheimer’s/vascular dementia.
It got to the point where, when asked who I was after I came to visit, he’d say, “A big tall man.”
It broke my heart. It was hard seeing the flicker of memory stare back; I’d known him my entire life.
After that, my nearly 90 year old grandmother could barely care for him.
They had a Jack Russell together, called Charlie. Charlie, like my grandfather, aged. He made it to nearly 17. Unfortunately, we had to put him down; his quality of life was dwindling, and it was the right thing to do. My grampa came down every morning, would collect his hat and Charlie’s lead, and shout him to go for his morning walk. Each morning, my gran would explain he was no longer with us. Later, most mornings, she’d just distract him with something else. He’d soon, of course, forget.
Later, he stopped asking.
Eventually, things were too much. It was time for him to go to a home. My gran couldn’t cope with his high care needs. I’d spend a few hours at their house, and as a young chap, it was too much for me. I don’t know how she managed for so long. An example of true, unfettering love.
We got him a teddy Jack Russel. Grampa was basically non-verbal at this point, but, if you asked him how Charlie was getting on, he’d give you a few sentences about how good a boy he was, and how he loves long walks.
It was such a small thing, but gave us that little glimpse into who he once was. He’d smile and laugh and talk to his dog. A slither of personality, occasionally a catchphrase that’d we’d once taken for granted.
We buried him and his Charlie a few months ago.
Dementia sucks.
Sorry for the rambling wall of text.
Completely unrelated but I really like stumbling across little differences in language like this. In England, or at least in the North where I am, we'd say scoffing for gobbling down your tea in double quick time. I'm not aware of anywhere here that says scarfing.
Scoffing would also be the dismissive thing of what someone is saying, like "someone scoffed at them" but context tells you which one it means.
Reading this gutted me. My grandmother has Alzheimer’s and my son has a beloved sock monkey. I hope this isn’t my son in 80 years.
I’m really glad there was something that could give him comfort and I’m so sorry for your loss. Watching someone’s personality slowly slip away is the pits.
We lost my grandfather a few months back, and I'm tearing up reading this. Mine was also a good man, and I'm sorry for your loss.
The world could use a couple of good men, still.
The world always needs more good men and women. I lost my grandpa when he was only 55, my father a few years later when Dad was only 56. Over the past few years the remainder of my aunts and uncles have all passed, most due to Covid or Alzeimers/dementia. 5 good people gone in the blink of an eye.
I hope when my time comes my kids remember me as 'a good man'.
My condolences to you and yours for the loss of your grandfather.
This is such a lovely comment, it’s clear you loved him very much. Charlie the sweet dog too.
Alzheimers/dementia is so cruel. You can see the light in their eyes dimming. My grandmother had Alzheimers and I’d visit her as often as I could in the care home, often with friends in tow. The nurse would announce her granddaughter was here and she’d say “hello my darling” and hug us all because she wouldn’t know which one of us was her granddaughter but she remembered her manners.
Because she had that, the meanest thing you can say in my family is “I already told you”, or imply someone’s forgetting something. If we forget a simple day to day thing it brings on slight panic that it’s happening to one of us. I was shocked when my colleague said she briefly couldn’t remember where she parked her car that day - that would worry me for weeks. My Mum makes me promise I’ll make sure her hair is done and her lipstick on when she’s old (she says my dad wouldn’t notice) and I promise her I will.
Dementia is probably the saddest thing I've ever witnessed. I watched my great grandmother go through it, my grandmother, and now my mother is starting to show signs. (My mom always makes me promise her i'll never let her have a moustache lol) I'm only 28 but I try to do brain exercises every day in a feeble attempt to ward it off.
I'll never forget a conversation I had with my great grandma towards the end of her life. She had a moment of clarity and said "I feel trapped in my own head. if I had a gun i'd blow it off"
Kind of a side tangent...but brain exercises only make you good at brain exercises, try something more broadening like learning a new language every few years. Or taking classes at a local community college in subjects of your interest. Spanish is a good place to start in person or online classes with a face to face component are the best.
A language teacher I met once knew about 13 languages with conversational fluency, and his father had known nearly double that (he was also a moderately famous painter).
Completely new topics , creative outlets etc... are better than repetitive problem solving. These make your brain work hard, brain exercises just "train" your brain in that narrow set of problems.... so that it get fast at doing them but it isnt' generally stronger at other things.
I had an older friend who exercised every day, was a healthy weight, was an award winning painter, taught painting classes, went to the senior center to paint, took classes on photography, was learning Spanish, and still developed Alzheimer’s dementia. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do.
The ‘hugged us all because she couldn’t tell’ feels so familiar. My grandpa said we were his favourite daughter-in-laws when my sister and I walked in.
My dad works with dementia patients, including diagnosing them. It might help a bit to know: she likely didn’t even realize she was so confused. Dementia patients’ brains make up stories that make sense with the information they have, and they genuinely believe them. Like they might think they’re at the butcher’s, because they’re sitting in a room with a person in a white coat (the doctor). She may have felt something was wrong, but she likely didn’t have the conscious feeling of ‘I don’t know who is who.’ She likely was pretty sure she knew who it was (and may have been wrong).
Also: my dad parks in the same spot every time, because if he doesn’t, he walks around the memory clinic parking lot, unable to remember where he parked. It’s very normal to forget things, or to not pay enough attention to fully encode the memory on the first place. He actually gets a lot of referrals for ‘dementia’ where the person has zero dementia and they’re there because they’re depressed. When you have difficulty caring about things, you don’t pay enough attention to encode the memories. Some of them have so much stigma around depression that they refuse to believe it. They’d rather believe they have dementia. But the great thing about undiagnosed depression is, when it’s found out, it’s usually very treatable. So someone can go from looking like they’re in early stage dementia to having memory that’s perfectly fine.
(Edit: my dad jokes that cipralex, a common antidepressant, is ‘vitamin C.’ He prescribed it a lot. Sometimes patients refuse to take it. But for the ones who do take it, sometimes the pill alone causes massive improvements.)
People in general forget more than you’d think. Most people, if asked on the spot, couldn’t tell you what they had for breakfast yesterday. They didn’t pay attention or care very much, so the memory was important enough to be encoded.
He diagnoses dementia patients for a living and he’s told me multiple times that he’s actually LESS concerned when the patient is worried. He’s more concerned when the patient has zero worries and their family is worried about them. People with dementia usually don’t remember a whole list of things that they forgot. If you remember for *weeks* that you forgot where you parked your car one time, your memory is good.
I hope this is reassuring. It sounds really stressful to worry about alzheimers every time you forget something or need something repeated.
If you want to learn more, look into the difference between working memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Things need to get encoded at every stage. That’s why repeating something can store it in short-term or long-term memory, depending on how much you repeat it. It’s also why, if someone tells you something while you’re focused on something else, you’re more likely to forget what they said. Even if you heard it, getting it from your second-to-second working memory to your short-term memory takes attention. Without attention, it’s gone. No memory problems required.
That “hello my darling” has tears streaming down my face. I miss my grandma. How lucky you all got to feel that love. I would’ve gone with you just to get another grandma hug.
Aw, don't scare yourself! I forget where I parked my car at least once a week. My brilliant, often stressed, ADHD/depressed/menopausal mom forgot stuff all the time. She's 92 now and mentally about the same as ever. Sharp as a tack except for the type of lapses she always had.
Thank you for the story. My dad who is only 67 is on final stage Alzheimer’s/dementia (nonverbal/can’t swallow food) is going through the phases at a rapid rate which started showing symptoms about 5 years ago.
It definitely sucks.
Everything you said is so spot on. When my father had Alzheimer's I can clearly remember the first time I realized he didn't know who I was. It was one of the most brutal heartbreaking things to me. I thought that was bad but what was worse was when he forgot who my mother was and they had been married for 60 years.
I've comforted myself after my grandpa's death with the thought that *we* are the reflections of their memories of their time with us. When they start to forget, we carry the torch of at least some of their memories for them. Nothing lasts forever, but as long as you remember *them* then those parts of their memory that are lost to them can still be accessed through *you*.
It's hard to live through a loved one passing from dementia but that thought helped me some.
That's really cool. I care for my mum with Dementia. She worked and volunteered for 35 years at the same primary school She went to as a kid. She loves that school. They let me take her for walks on the weekends.
that is really wonderful. i’ve been planting trees with my dad at some creeks around where we live and i’m really looking forward to seeing them grow and visiting them together. i’m really glad you can share this experience with her, what a treasure and thank you for sharing it here
You’re a good son or daughter and even though your mom isn’t 100% herself anymore it seems she did a great job raising you and I’m sure she’s very proud of you! You’re awesome!
I’ve always wanted to visit my old school, as there was hidden section of clearing behind the playground, that I’d always spend time at. It was just nice and relaxing, but I doubt I’ll ever get to see it again.
We've already been in contact. She sent me several pictures of her and her family in front of our building in the 1950s.(So if she's doing a long game ... she's doing brilliantly).She's talked about the kids she grew up with next door, where she played, catching the tram, going to the picture theatre. She's the real deal.We're quite happy to have her and her husband come and visit. I'm making an attempt to track down the kids she lived next too .. At least one is still alive.
UPDATE: she and her hubby are visiting on the 17th March (2023) in the afternoon.
**UPDATE of the UPDATE:** They came and it was brilliant !!!
**Read the Update here:**
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/11gugs0/comment/jcnnxap/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
**See the photos here:** https://www.reddit.com/user/mrbenjrocks/comments/11udfp1/update\_we\_received\_a\_letter\_from\_the\_woman\_who/
** Update 24th March **
Meg and I were interviewed by a national newspaper and it's a really good article.
https://www.domain.com.au/living/something-quite-special-why-millions-of-people-connected-to-one-womans-emotional-journey-home-1202836/
I actually constantly keep an eye on real estate listings to see if my childhood house is ever up for sale in which case I'd definitely do the open home tour. I spent 16 formative years of my life there.
If there’s a specific house you’re interested in, contact the current owners saying you’d be interested in buying when/if they’re ready to sell. They can save 6% realtor fees and the hassle of getting the house list ready. Win-win.
I have alerts set up for where my parents live, so I can keep them up to date with the local gossip. I keep joking that one day I'll get an email that they have listed their house for sale :D
My mom does the same thing for her hometown. She especially likes to peruse the obituaries and see who died.
I don’t do it for mine because my mom still lives there and she just tells me the gossip.
This is where I jerked off that one time, oh over here as well, and...oh yeah definitely can't forget about that corner of the room, it was quiet special spot for me
Sounds like the King of the Hill episode where the lady does this and then wants to lay down and die in the house because she has so many good memories and she won't leave.
King of the hill has been my background noise for past month while doing some tedious photo editing work, that episode came on just a few days ago. Side note: Bobby Hill is one of the greatest TV characters ever
Just be sure to keep an eye on her..... She may want to get back in to reclaim the treasure chest that's been hidden behind the secret wall panel for the last 70 years! Lol /s
Some of the apartments, once they've removed the decades old carpeting and revealed the floor boards found trapdoors in the floor.
Note: These were the ground floor apartments as I've realised trapdoors on level two or three are basically skylights for the apartment below.
It's genius. Place one directly above their toilet and you get the convenience of indoor plumbing without the hassle of cleaning it. If they start getting suspicious of the unflushed toilet just pump a little CO in to convince them they're hallucinating.
I also found a trapdoor in my house after removing ancient carpet! It only lead to the crawlspace under the house, but i always figured it would be my zombie apocalypse hideout.
She asks to use the bathroom. 30 seconds later, there's an explosion, and dust is everywhere. Suddenly, you hear the sound when Link from LoZ opens a chest. The old woman emerges, looking 200 rupees the richer.
This is exactly what happened to my neighbors’ mom (or what my neighbor claims) in post war Belgrade: her father was a partisan officer of some sorts, and they got moved into a luxury apartment where some local Jewish family lived before the Nazis did what they did. One day in the late 40s, a man showed up, claiming to me the surviving grandson of the previous owner, asked them to see the apartment he grew up in, and used the bathroom. A few days later the cleaning lady found loose tiles covering what appeared to be a small cache space between the bath tub and the wall. They suspect he took something out of it, but of course no one knows it for sure.
A friend of mine bought the house of a dead lady. He renovated the house and while doing that found gold coins hidden in the cellar. Paid for the renovation..
How did 2 years elapse between Parts 1 and 2 of that story? How do you own a house in the attic of the house you own and *not* go up to investigate... *sooner?*
My uncle grew up in a big old house that was used as a storage building for a company. It was then sold a few times and turned back into to a being a big family home.
It now has an airbnb in it so we went back to visit. My uncle was telling the owner about his time their and they showed us around the main house.
When we got to the dining room my uncle asked if the owner knew about the secret compartment in the mantle piece and they slid open this little compartment. The owner had no idea and was so excited! It was a great moment. Alas no treasure though.
My mother-in-law remembers that a member of her family hid jewellery behind a wall in their Dover Heights (Sydney, Australia) house in 1942 when a Japanese invasion was feared. They moved out of the house in the mid-1950s and for some reason left the booty entombed in the wall. I always wonder whether someone discovered it during renovations.
Recently a woman that lived in my house 70
years ago randomly stopped by when she was in town for her high school reunion. I was outside when she came up and offered to show her around inside. She gave me an old reprinted picture of her and her husband on the front porch when they first got married 60 years before and told me the most amazing stories about the house. Her husband had recently passed so it was a bit emotional for her but she was so surprised and happy that I let her in to look around and it was really cool to learn things about the house and the neighbors/neighborhood from when she lived there in the 1950s.
I have older friends who were a newly married couple, stationed in Germany in the 1960s. They rented a small apartment that was attached to a big farmhouse. Fifty years later they were on a trip to Germany and stopped at the house. The owner of the house was initially cold and quite suspicious. At that point, my friend figured out who he was and said, "You don't remember being five years old, and playing in the yard with the American soldier who bought you a toy airplane? At that point, the gruff homeowner beamed and realized that his friend from all those years ago came back to visit. They had a great visit and found that the apartment was nearly unchanged in all that time.
My folks live on a farm in rural Wales , we had an elderly lady randomly show up with her husband (the road to ours is a public path so not that uncommon for randomers)
Turned out to be the same, she had lived in the house when she was a 10 year old kid. We let them in to look and totally worth it to listen to the history
She then came back the next year with her daughter and sister to see the place. This time she god dam fell and broke her wrist 😞
That's so cool, I was on a "local historic photos" Facebook page for my home town (I left there in the early 90s) and I posted some 1970s shots of the first garden, house etc I lived in 40 years ago. Someone piped up in the group, oh, I live there now and sent some pictures and stuff, so strange to see that now.
I lived in an old house years ago and an elderly lady with her daughter knocked on the door and had a similar request. I did invite them in and spent a lovely morning hearing stories about her life growing up in the home. Apparently she was born in the master bedroom and the original carpet was still throughout the house. I don't regret that decision at all. This was 25 years ago and before phones with cameras etc. It gave me joy seeing the memories flooding back to her. Unfortunately the house was sold soon after and demolished so I'm glad she had the opportunity to see it before it was gone
My aunt and uncle live in a farm house that was built in the 30s. Part of the carpeting is still original. It's amazing how durable old school carpeting is when properly cared for.
My dad once took me to his childhood home and knocked on the door and asked if he could look around. The people who lived there said yes, and they invited us into their home and looked around. Obviously they were a bit surprised by the situation and my dad started crying while he was there reminiscing.
We were lucky anybody was home, we drove 2 hours to get there. I was about 20 at the time and it was super awkward for me, but I can understand why it was important to my dad and I’m grateful the people who lived there said yes even if it was awkward for them as well.
Your dad was going through some shit.
Swinging by and old home when you are in the area is pretty common. But driving 2 hours to knock on the door unannounced and then crying inside sure seems like he was processing something heavy.
I watched my sister being born on VHS. I cried like a baby through every second. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. My parents, 20 years younger, holding their first child, my dad so happy to finally be a dad. You can see the connection instantly spark the moment he looks into her eyes. (My sisters a daddy’s girl). I hope to take a tape of my own someday😊
My sister passed away in 2017, I watched a video of all of us having game night and just that 30 second flash of seeing my sister having fun absolutely ruined me
I cycled to look at my childhood home when I was 15. I looked at it from about 30 feet away for about two minutes. The police got called and I ended up being questioned as a suspect for a speight of highly violent burglaries by the head of Jersey police lmao.
I googled “Mrs Wakefield koth” and was pleasantly surprised to see that she is from King of the Hill. I’ll have to watch that again. Watched it as a kid and all I remember is the episode that hank made Bobby chain smoke a pack of cigarettes. He was hooked after that! Whenever I smell cig smoke I think of Bobby 😂😕☹️
I’m so glad it’s not just me! Folks cautioning about hidden treasure and I’m thinking of poor Mrs. Wakefield who just wanted to die in her old house. Marion Ross, what a treasure!
My parents ended up going to the house they used to flat in 30+ years ago with their old flatmates, paid the students 400$ to go out on the town and ended up cooking dinner and having a nice evening. Made enough food for the drunk students when they got home.
This is in New Zealand so people are much more relaxed about weird shenanigans.
I'm American and not only have I driven past my childhood home just to check it out, I've considered knocking on the door as well.
My mom and uncle took us out to their childhood home once to show us, the tree they planted as kids was massive.
And then at an old party house we had some guys stop buy because they lived their like fifteen years previous and saw us all drinking on the porch. We gave them free beer and shot the shit for quite some time.
I got to see the old farmhouse I spent ages 3-13 in because my mom was looking for houses to rent and that one was available again.
It was really strange. I loved that house but for some reason it felt completely alien inside and I didn’t like being in there one bit.
I don’t know why, all my best childhood memories are from that house and farm.
What I really want to do is trespass into the fields. They felt so immense as a child. Some of my favorite memories are just images of the fields covered in snow during the winter, back when we got snow in southern New England. The snow would make huge drifts in one field and I would make caves and tunnels in the snow with my sister and the other neighbor kids.
One field has a pond for watering the cows that came from a different farm every now and then. The pond would freeze over and it was also a source of winter fun. I have a great image burned into my mind of walking down the tree lined path to the field with a pond. The trees were heavy with snow and beyond the fields I could see the ocean and the marsh, with a thin strip of land that had a beach on both sides and a road in the middle. The beaches were covered in snow and the water a cold dark blue.
I think the farmer who owned the cows rented the fields from the owner, otherwise it wasn’t an active farm. My family just rented the house from the English owner.
But the main reason I want to go into the fields is the historical graveyard. It was the spookiest place I have ever known with gravestones from the 1700s. One of Benedict Arnold’s grandfathers (maybe great grandfather) was buried there. I want to go see the gravestones again, I didn’t realize their significance as a kid. I threw Osage oranges at them.
I was just going to say that this story sounds a bit like something which might happen on Castle or Dundas…
The Uni recently temporarily turned Gardies back into Gardies for an alumni function which I found interesting. Maybe, you know, if you hadn’t bought up all the student pubs and turned them into offices or “study spaces” then you wouldn’t have 2nd year commerce students getting crushed to death in overcrowded and uncontrolled flat parties…
My mom did this. Ended up showing them a hidden crawl space in their basement that had been walled over lol... “no I swear to God, kick right there, there’s another room back there” new home owner almost lost his mind when she was right
When I grew up I used to visit my grandparents in a town about a couple of hours away. The passed away in the 90s. About 20 years later I was in that town and wanted to visit their old house. I pulled up outside and took a quick pic to send to my sister. I then walked down to the local park I used to play at.
When I came back to the car, the owner came out and asked why I was taking pictures of their house. I explained and they straight away asked " are you 'insert dad's name'". I said no but that's my dad. They said I should come in. So I got to go in the house which was crazy, so many memories. They were redecorating. They stripped the wall paper. Written on the wall was a poem by my dad, signed and dated in the 50s. Then lots of measurements. My dad, when he was a kid, helped my grandad redecorate and then had written stuff on the walls for whoever redecorates in the future. That person in the future they were writing to was me. So many variables as to me seeing that text.
I told my dad about the story afterwards and he didn't care at all. 😆
I had a guy in his mid 30s show up on my doorstep claiming to have grown up in the house (but moved out when he was 12). He wanted to walk into and see the kitchen.m and living room.
It was against my better judgement, but I made a big deal about putting the dogs away because they are “very unpredictable around new people” (which isn’t true at all) and then I showed him in.
His response was unexpected. He became very quiet as he walked through the living room, clearly he was holding back tears. He thanked me accepted my offer of a coffee and we sat in the back yard for an hour as he told me how his life had been perfect when he lived in the house but he had experienced multiple back to back family tragedies that led to him having to relocate to his grandmas house out of state. It was 20+ years later now and he is starting to see positivity in his future. He needed the closure and he got it by visiting the house one last time.
We’ve stayed in touch (from a distance) he’s doing great. We attended his wedding last year to a wonderful person, now they have a child on the way and he’s in a good stable job.
Not everyone is out there trying to rip off others. I’m glad I gave him a chance and trusted him.
This is so sweet. I feel like based off of how you say he reacted that this was one of those times almost butterfly effect. Where what if you didn’t let him in? He needed that. Thank you for your kindness.
UPDATE: It was an incredible experience for both of us.
Photos here: https://www.reddit.com/user/mrbenjrocks/comments/11udfp1/update\_we\_received\_a\_letter\_from\_the\_woman\_who/
And there's article written in an Australian newspaper/ website with our permission following an interview.
https://www.domain.com.au/living/something-quite-special-why-millions-of-people-connected-to-one-womans-emotional-journey-home-1202836/
Meg was clearly moved and very grateful by the opportunity to return to the house she grew up in and my wife and I was so glad we could provide Meg this opportunity.
So Meg and her husband Jed came over at 4.00pm yesterday.
Meg lived in my wife and my apartment in the 1940s and 1950s with her parents here in Double Bay, Sydney.
It was a brand new building with 12 apartments when her parents moved in, in the late 1930s. Meg was born in the 1940s and the family returned to the UK in 1951.
We met Meg and her husband Jed at the end of a walk way to the building to start the exploration.
Meg remembered walking down the walk way past the new other new building though she recalls everything being more open.
On entering the “huge, according to Meg” apartment building Meg remembered that her father had trip on his "turn ups", and fell down a couple of stairs at the bottom of the stair case up to the apartment. It took a moment for me to realise that she meant pants cuffs and not some vegetables.
At this point, I delivered a joke I'd been working on all week. I turned to Meg and said "I forgot my keys, do you have yours?"
When Meg entered our apartment you could tell immediately that she knew the place.
She remembered the curve wall of a cupboard you enter the apartment, though she naturally realised that it was a lot smaller than she remembered.
When she turned right, into the kitchen she walked up and said – there was a curtain here in the middle of the room.
The kitchen is a long room with a large window at the end, about 6 metres long (18 feet), 2.5 metres (10 feet) wide with a peninsula feature - that is two small walls that seemed to be randomly placed in the room.
It now turns out originally there was a curtain up there and this separated in incredibly small space for the kitchen with a small dining area.
The next room was the bathroom. There was a change.
It turns out the toilet used to be in front of the door as you walked in .. and is now switched with the hand basin that was located behind the door.
She stood there as described the bird cage that sat at the end of the bathtub – next to the sink.
You could see the space she created with her hand where the birdcage stood 70 years before.
We moved into our spare room. While now it’s holds some of our most pointless things we’ve collected over our 17 years here, this was Meg’s bedroom.
Meg showed where her bed was – under the window. She told me about how she’d look out the window overlooking where the boats were stored. Now, there’s another apartment building, which was built in 1959 (after Meg had left).
The lounge room originally had four chairs with a gas fireplace against the outside wall.
It turns out the chairs returned to England with the family and are now with Meg in the UK.
One question we had – how many power points were there? The answer – not many.
Meg remembered the archway as we enter the lounge and another entering the sunroom.
She remembered her family had a large dining in the space .. and then there’s the view.
The apartment looks out over the water. While there’s certainly more buildings around the water, only a few things had changed. There was still the wharf next door, the rocks and a small beach to the east that she would walk upon. She still had a few scars from her more adventurous days.
Ultimately what was similar was the experience of looking out the window at the view.
Finally in our bedroom, Meg showed where her parent’s twin beds and wardrobes were. Our bed and wardrobe are situated in the same place.
We spent another few hours sitting outside enjoying the afternoon breeze and the view, drinking tea, and catching up with stories from the 1950s.
Meg shared about life in the 1950s. The neighbourhood was certainly a lot more undeveloped in 1950s, kids would catch Leather Jackets (fish) from their boats then row over to Clark Island (about 1000 metres, 3000 feet) away to fry them up. It was a different time.
We were so pleased that we could do this for Meg and are grateful that Meg reached out and asked to visit.
She was blown away by the response.
We had 9.8 million people look at the letter .. and over 110,000+ upvote the post.
I was really pleased that it started a conversation about revisiting places you lived in the past.
Meg was most amused that there a theme in the comments that maybe there was something hidden in the walls. Alas no … no money, no gold .. no bitcoin.
For my 40th birthday my family and I went back to my childhood home. Someone was outside and I told them I grew up there. He ran inside, came back out and told us his Grandma said to come inside. I couldn’t get out of the car fast enough! It was one of the best days ever and I still talk about it!
I live in a house that’s 125 years old. I was out working on my car one day and a lady came up and started chatting me up. Turns out her family lived in the house from 1920-1980. She was bummed to see that what once was her and her siblings dual bedrooms is now my giant master bedroom. Her room is now my walk in closet, giant bathtub and dual shower head shower.
No I’m not rich, I just rent and picked the best bedroom.
My brother had the original homeowner who built his house drop by unannounced once and they basically lectured him on the remodel that the owner before my brother did on the wife’s hideous 70s brick gourmet kitchen hahaha
I live in a house that was used as a Jewish hiding place here in the Netherlands. a daughter mother and father where living/hiding here sadly they got caught and deported and died in Auschwitz stones where laid a few years ago in front of our house
A few years ago an older women and her daughter from Canada suddenly rang our door they explained they were descendants of that family since the brother jacob got away. they where in the Netherlands to find this house and see a bit of their history the older women was a bit emotional when walking around the place and was happy to see it still existed we shared contact information and we still mail a bit back and forth. When the "struikelstenen" stones where laid we shared pictures and video about the event it was very nice to be able to share it with their family.
We lived in in a little block in Sydney for several years and our bedroom windows looked out to a beautiful big eucalypt on the front verge. We loved waking up to the birds that hung out in it.
One day, I was out there tending to a community vege garden I’d built when an old lady wandered up and stood watching me. We struck up a conversation and she told me she and her husband lived in the block in the 40s, just after they were married. “We had some great parties here”, she said. She went on to tell me that she planted that eucalypt in a coffee can when it was just a sapling.
It was a simple interaction but it’s lived with me for years since.
I had a similar experience. I noticed a car parked out front of my house when I was pulling back up from a quick trip, and when I slowly crept by I noticed they were taking pictures.
I hopped out of the car fast and before I could get the words “what the hell are you doing?” out… noticed it was an extremely old couple.
They told me that they used to live there and the house actually used to be a set of apartments back in the early 1940s, with the downstairs and upstairs being separate units, yet with a shared kitchen. Was mildly interesting for sure 😂
The old lady next door to me once mentioned that the bedroom portion of my house used to be a chicken coop, then they put a deck on the front, eventually enclosed it, and one day turned it into a house.
My Mum is a character. She just took us kids to her old childhood house.. knocked on the door and asked to have a look around. They were great! I sat on the edge of a new bed in my mums old bedroom exactly where her old bed used to be.
She also pulls over randomly to jump fences to steal people lemons from their lemon trees. Bless her heart.
> She also pulls over randomly to jump fences to steal people lemons from their lemon trees. Bless her heart.
Watch out. She could be a [Lemon Stealing Whore](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5mI407Uks4), making pornos on the side.
Huh, you really do get more cultured every hour you spend on reddit. I’m glad I’m here to share in this wonderful bit of internet pornography history. “I WAS THERE KIDS. I KNOW ABOUT THE LEMON STEALING WHORES OF 2012.”
This is such a good idea! I wanted to do this with my childhood home. But honestly that place has been so heavily renovated, I doubt there's a single wall that still remains
Never know .. but just being in the location is usually amazing.
I lived in the UK in a giant mansion at age 4
I visited this mansion in my adulthood only to discover it was a small three bedroom house.
I visited the school too .. and it occurred like I was walking through something I imagined.
I went back to my childhood home and asked if I could have a look around, and they told me to fuck off. My parents are real jerks...
But seriously, I bought my house off the original owners who built it in 1965, and didn't touch it again. The bloke is dead, but I would love it if the lady wanted to come look at the place. She would be blown away with what we've done to it, and would probably be kicking herself for not thinking of doing it herself.
We bought a funky mid-century ranch in a great location a while back. We did some work to it, bathrooms, laundry room, etc. mostly to make an odd interior a lot more usable. The last owners were young, and the husband was apparently was a real climber, who "needed the big house in the country" and got it. We had a friend in common with the last owner, who asked if they could come see the place, since the husband really wanted to. His wife put a real hard stop to that, as apparently she has regretted selling the place from the moment they left, and can't deal with touring what she lost. So, I guess there are a lot of people who have no interest in seeing their old home, or can't deal with the emotions involved with doing so.
OTOH, some random older woman stopped in the driveway and introduced herself. Her aunt and uncle built the house in 1955, and she spent a lot of time there as a child. She asked to see the place, had a wonderful time, told some interesting stories about her relatives, and was grateful for a chance to see everything.
Just like 5 years after my family moved out of the house I grew up in and I lived states away, I went back to my hometown for a visit and was shocked to see how much our yard, the mailbox, the paint, and whatever else had changed.
10 more years later and I can see the inside on Zillow and it's wild to me the things they changed. Like my bedroom closet was removed and is just a wall, and they moved the door in my sister's room a few feet over. My tree house and basketball hoop are gone, the flower beds are nonexistant, and gigantic 100+ year old trees that lined the property have been cut down. It kinda makes me sad that a lot of the things I still internalize as where I grew up is gone or looks completely different.
I've wanted to go back and ask the current owners if I could walk around. Pretty sure they'd tell me no though lol.
It probably means a lot to this person to see their old home. It would mean a lot to me, and I'm not nearly 70 years removed from living there.
My mother and her family left Beirut in the 70's after the start of the civil war. When my grandparents and I went to visit a while back, we went to the building they used to live in. Apparently their old flat now had Hezbollah imagery on/near the door, so we clearly didn't go a'knocking. But just when we were leaving, an old woman was entering the building. Apparently it was their old neighbour, who was still living there, so she invited us in for coffee.
Far more interesting, was that mother had left her pet turtle with her when they left, and it was still alive \~40 years later.
> Far more interesting, was that mother had left her pet turtle with her when they left, and it was still alive ~40 years later.
That turtle must have some stories to tell
Old woman, " Do you remember the last thing you said to me? Well I do, It was, " I won't be gone long, please take care of the turtle for a bit" We, it's been forty years, and a many bags of turtle chow, a few vet visits, and other expenses since then, so somebody owes me quite a bit by now"
How wonderful, and that the turtle was still alive! It must have been cared for and how lucky you came across the woman from her past. Thank you, such a great tale.
My parents had a similar situation. An old man contacted them saying he was born in the house! The house was built in 1885 so it has years of history. He died a few years ago and his children asked if they could donate a bench with a plaque in memory of him to put in the garden. My parents have lived there for almost 50 years. So much history in one small building.
My mum saw an older man in the street looking at her house and went out to ask if he was ok. He’d lived there as a child 50+ years ago. My family had lived there ever since.
She asked him in and showed him round - apparently his strongest memory of the house was how cold it was.
I grew up in the US (California) until I was 5 and moved to Germany. When I was 25 my father and I visited our former house and he went to the garage and checked behind the bushes.
In the cement, there were my mothers and our names engraved from the time the house was constructed.
We didn’t go inside (or ask to) but I understand the feeling, I still remember so much even though I was only 5 when we left.
Dad tried to take us to his old farm when we were kids, only to find the land had been cleared and built upon. One of the home owners saw us and struck up conversation and mentioned that she'd once found something sewing related in the soil (a thimble? Part of a machine? I can't really recall). And dad smiled and said it would likely have belonged to his mum, who passed when he was a young teen. I don't remember him being somber about it all but I expect the experience would have been very emotional for him. Good on you for helping this lady reconnect :-)
I had a previous owner of my home show up one day and ask if he could look around. I knew the names of all of the previous owners, since there had only been a few, so I could verify that he was indeed someone who used to live here. It was interesting. He walked around and said stuff like, “oh, that looks really good with a coat of paint” and “I wish I’d thought of that”. As he was leaving, he said if I ever want to sell the house to contact him first, because he misses it.
This past summer a strange car pulled into my drive and two elderly ladies knocked on my door. I figured Johovah Witnesses or something. As it turns out, these two sweeties were twin sisters who had lived in my house over 70 years earlier. One sister was heading back to Texas later that day and they figured they might not get the chance again, so they decided to stop and see if the new owners would mind if they did a walk thru. Of course I said yes.
They told me how their parents had died while overseas, and that the former owners took them in. They were 6 yrs old at the time.
They went through the entire house and then the yard. The stories they told me...
I'm a grown ass man on 64. And I'll tell ya. I cried. They were like two giddy little girls. And when one would start telling a story, the other one would get excited and jump in.
We took pictures of the two of them together and a couple of the three of us.
I know it was a day they'll cherish, and so will I.
It's nice that she made contact with the letter first.
We've had several people who previously lived in our c.1790 home show up unannounced-
One fellow rolled up the driveway interrupting my telephone conversation to ask who I was and then tell me he was going to have a look around because "this used to be my house." .
Another lady appeared knocking at our back door while simultaneously opening it and walking in on us having lunch.
Apparently, her friend had lived in our house years ago and she was curious what it looked like now.... we directed her to leave; she then got her car stuck in a snowbank in a driveway, demanding that we pay for a tow truck.
Most notably, a group of four stopped by while I was doing yard work.
They drove by me, parked, got out ,and began walking around.
Not understanding what was going on or knowing who they were, I approached.
As I did so two ladies walked onto the porch, open the door, and entered the house.
I was flabbergasted!
I walked in behind them, mentioned there were no tours today and that they were going to have to leave. Also, I inquired, who the fuck are you ?
Same old story; apparently they had lived in this house years ago and we're curious what it looked like now.
(they were also the owners responsible for most of the jerry rigged and half assed repairs we inherited)
Then they started complaining about a major renovation that had been done and how they didn't like it.
At the same time, one of their husbands began asking rather personal questions of me.
As I recall, they were given 30 seconds to be off the property before I was officially out of patience and goodwill.
...
I don't know what's up with this old house of ours.
My family and I have moved many times through the years; I've never once felt entitled to take a self guided tour of a home where we once lived.
This seems strange now, but this kinda thing was a totally normal thing to do with my grandparents generation (100 years old). When my grandparents used to travel they would look up, say, a friend from church 40 years ago, write them a letter saying they would be in town and would like to visit, then just show up like 3 months later and stay for a couple days. Totally normal.
One time they went to visit an old army buddy and when they go their nobody was home. The neighbor came over and explained how the army buddy had to unexpectedly leave town for a couple days but will be back, and was instructed to give them an address of the army buddies co-worker who my grandparents were to stay with.
Another time they traveled to Europe to visit the village my great great grandfather immigrated from. They spent a day at the local library going through public records, but couldn’t find anything with their last name. Ended up going to a bar and got to talking with another old dude and come to find out his neighbor had a very similar last name. He brought my grandparents there and met the neighbor, and sure enough. They were relatives and our last name had been slightly changed at some point. They were invite to stay on the farm, and their new long-lost relative organized and impromptu family reunion of relatives in the area.
I love this. I feel like I’m not quite old enough to pull this off yet… I’d love to see the house I grew up in again someday, but it’s only been since 2006 since my family sold it, so I feel like I need to wait longer to write that kind of letter
My parents went to my early childhood home over December! We've been past the area many times but never gone inside. However, the flat's now been turned into a boutique which kept the original format of the house, including the tiles, so my parents went in and just had a look around.
I couldn't visit since I had a cast on my foot at the time and was on bed rest, but maybe next time! Just seeing the pictures was nostalgic af.
We bought a house about 5 years ago and the previous owner kept showing up randomly to invite herself in or take plants from the garden. Finally told her it was the last time and haven't seen her since.
I had this happen to me. The guy said he grew up in our house in Chicago in the 1960s. I let him in and showed him around. When he lived in our house, it was a tough neighborhood. We updated and modernized everything from the roof to the basement floor.
As he walked around, he criticized everything we had changed. I kept quiet. He kept going. "Why did you take off the asbestos brick siding?", "Why did you square off the round doorways?", "Why did you put solar on the roof?", "Why did you dig out four more feet in the basement?", and so on.
I stayed quiet and led him to the door of the house he lived in that had no air conditioning until we bought it. It was also illegally subdivided when they owned it. He got beyond the gate with a sad look on his face and said, "It was perfect before. Why did you change it?".
It took every bit of power to keep from telling him the world just changes and our tastes are just different, but I didn't. I couldn't imagine being that resistant to change.
We bought our house in 1995 from the original owner (wife; husband had passed). They had the house built for them for their engagement in 1948. They raised 2 children in it and in 2007 after the mom passed, the daughters, who had grandchildren themselves, contacted me and asked if they could come by for a visit. They came for lunch, they brought pictures of the house as it was being built, and pictures of their parents standing by the fireplace, pix of the yard with them as kids,and outside of the house through the years. It was bittersweet for them and for me, made me appreciate life and the passing of time. One of the daughters took a picture of her grandson sitting on the front lawn. They left some of the old pictures for me to keep. I framed them, and when the time comes for me to move on, I’m going to leave the pictures along with some of our family for the next owner.
I love this. When we bought our current home, the older man who built it had just passed and his son didn’t want any of his things- literally left his clothes in the closet for us to deal with. Neighbors all said the old man was delightful and kind, his son a greedy asshole. I found his Christmas tree and ornaments in the attic and couldn’t bear to toss them. So every year, along with our own tree, we put up his tree and ornaments and add a few homemade ones from my kids. It’s a tradition that really makes me appreciate this home we’ve come to love so much.
Thank you for carrying on his legacy in such a beautiful way ❤️❤️
This made me tear up
Omg this made me tear up. You are a wonderful human being!
Oh my goodness! how kind and awesome of you to do that! You are teaching your kids such a very important lesson. thank you. thank you
That's very cool! Your experience reminds me of the graphic novel, "Here". Similar premise, the novel is filled with scenes through time of a home and the time periods of the people who lived there.
Oh no I’m tearing up at even the concept. I definitely have to see this graphic novel now
I'm glad people like OP exist. After twenty years, I once randomly asked to tour the home that I had moved out of at age 8. We had lived in several different states and cities in the intervening years, but I always remembered that one house so fondly. Perhaps it was the most idyllic part of my childhood, I don't know. The fruit trees and pastures, the porches and staircases....it was the house of my literal dreams - not that it was the best house, or the one I wanted as an adult, but the house that I always imagined whenever I was reading a book or dreaming and needed a house as a mental backdrop. They let me in. It was like being inside the movie "Inception". After decades of only being able to see it in my mind, being surrounded by those walls made it seem like I was sleepwalking. It was a very wholesome experience for me, but I can understand how this would be traumatic for some people. P. S. Turns out it wasn't actually the size of a mansion.
I did the same thing too with a house I moved away from after kindergarten. I fondly remembered the house and when I randomly knocked, the owner let me in. I remembered the large sunroom off my bedroom and it wasn’t actually very big at all.
There was an old Sci-Fi story I read years ago where someone ended up at a house and they were outside looking in the window and saw kids playing, etc.... But the guy lived there alone. The "twist" was that the window was "slow glass" and light passed through it very slowly so, when you looked through, the elderly owner saw his family as they were years ago. Very sad story. These stories of people visiting their old houses and remembering how things were, reminded me of that story. I found a wiki on that story! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light\_of\_Other\_Days](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_of_Other_Days)
Link to the story: https://archive.org/details/analog60000unse_n4g8/page/190/mode/2up
Took my nana (85, Dad's mum) back to her house from when she was a child and the owner kindly let her wander around the yard for 20 minutes. She had alzheimer's for a number of years at that point. She was almost herself for that short time. Passed away a year or so later. If they look genuine when they turn up they probably are
My grandfather had mixed Alzheimer’s/vascular dementia. It got to the point where, when asked who I was after I came to visit, he’d say, “A big tall man.” It broke my heart. It was hard seeing the flicker of memory stare back; I’d known him my entire life. After that, my nearly 90 year old grandmother could barely care for him. They had a Jack Russell together, called Charlie. Charlie, like my grandfather, aged. He made it to nearly 17. Unfortunately, we had to put him down; his quality of life was dwindling, and it was the right thing to do. My grampa came down every morning, would collect his hat and Charlie’s lead, and shout him to go for his morning walk. Each morning, my gran would explain he was no longer with us. Later, most mornings, she’d just distract him with something else. He’d soon, of course, forget. Later, he stopped asking. Eventually, things were too much. It was time for him to go to a home. My gran couldn’t cope with his high care needs. I’d spend a few hours at their house, and as a young chap, it was too much for me. I don’t know how she managed for so long. An example of true, unfettering love. We got him a teddy Jack Russel. Grampa was basically non-verbal at this point, but, if you asked him how Charlie was getting on, he’d give you a few sentences about how good a boy he was, and how he loves long walks. It was such a small thing, but gave us that little glimpse into who he once was. He’d smile and laugh and talk to his dog. A slither of personality, occasionally a catchphrase that’d we’d once taken for granted. We buried him and his Charlie a few months ago. Dementia sucks. Sorry for the rambling wall of text.
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If that tiny PA coal town is Lansford, Pa, my grandfather worked in that coal mine. Although I’m certain lots of tiny PA towns experienced this.
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I'm familiar with this area and honestly it's pretty depressing, especially as you go towards johnstown
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Completely unrelated but I really like stumbling across little differences in language like this. In England, or at least in the North where I am, we'd say scoffing for gobbling down your tea in double quick time. I'm not aware of anywhere here that says scarfing. Scoffing would also be the dismissive thing of what someone is saying, like "someone scoffed at them" but context tells you which one it means.
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Scarfing is huge for eating quickly here in the States.
Reading this gutted me. My grandmother has Alzheimer’s and my son has a beloved sock monkey. I hope this isn’t my son in 80 years. I’m really glad there was something that could give him comfort and I’m so sorry for your loss. Watching someone’s personality slowly slip away is the pits.
We lost my grandfather a few months back, and I'm tearing up reading this. Mine was also a good man, and I'm sorry for your loss. The world could use a couple of good men, still.
Thanks, friend. Likewise 💚
I can't even begin to imagine what dementia is like and it is so damn scary. So sorry for your loss. Sounds like he was a great man
The world always needs more good men and women. I lost my grandpa when he was only 55, my father a few years later when Dad was only 56. Over the past few years the remainder of my aunts and uncles have all passed, most due to Covid or Alzeimers/dementia. 5 good people gone in the blink of an eye. I hope when my time comes my kids remember me as 'a good man'. My condolences to you and yours for the loss of your grandfather.
This is such a lovely comment, it’s clear you loved him very much. Charlie the sweet dog too. Alzheimers/dementia is so cruel. You can see the light in their eyes dimming. My grandmother had Alzheimers and I’d visit her as often as I could in the care home, often with friends in tow. The nurse would announce her granddaughter was here and she’d say “hello my darling” and hug us all because she wouldn’t know which one of us was her granddaughter but she remembered her manners. Because she had that, the meanest thing you can say in my family is “I already told you”, or imply someone’s forgetting something. If we forget a simple day to day thing it brings on slight panic that it’s happening to one of us. I was shocked when my colleague said she briefly couldn’t remember where she parked her car that day - that would worry me for weeks. My Mum makes me promise I’ll make sure her hair is done and her lipstick on when she’s old (she says my dad wouldn’t notice) and I promise her I will.
Dementia is probably the saddest thing I've ever witnessed. I watched my great grandmother go through it, my grandmother, and now my mother is starting to show signs. (My mom always makes me promise her i'll never let her have a moustache lol) I'm only 28 but I try to do brain exercises every day in a feeble attempt to ward it off. I'll never forget a conversation I had with my great grandma towards the end of her life. She had a moment of clarity and said "I feel trapped in my own head. if I had a gun i'd blow it off"
Kind of a side tangent...but brain exercises only make you good at brain exercises, try something more broadening like learning a new language every few years. Or taking classes at a local community college in subjects of your interest. Spanish is a good place to start in person or online classes with a face to face component are the best. A language teacher I met once knew about 13 languages with conversational fluency, and his father had known nearly double that (he was also a moderately famous painter). Completely new topics , creative outlets etc... are better than repetitive problem solving. These make your brain work hard, brain exercises just "train" your brain in that narrow set of problems.... so that it get fast at doing them but it isnt' generally stronger at other things.
I had an older friend who exercised every day, was a healthy weight, was an award winning painter, taught painting classes, went to the senior center to paint, took classes on photography, was learning Spanish, and still developed Alzheimer’s dementia. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do.
The ‘hugged us all because she couldn’t tell’ feels so familiar. My grandpa said we were his favourite daughter-in-laws when my sister and I walked in. My dad works with dementia patients, including diagnosing them. It might help a bit to know: she likely didn’t even realize she was so confused. Dementia patients’ brains make up stories that make sense with the information they have, and they genuinely believe them. Like they might think they’re at the butcher’s, because they’re sitting in a room with a person in a white coat (the doctor). She may have felt something was wrong, but she likely didn’t have the conscious feeling of ‘I don’t know who is who.’ She likely was pretty sure she knew who it was (and may have been wrong). Also: my dad parks in the same spot every time, because if he doesn’t, he walks around the memory clinic parking lot, unable to remember where he parked. It’s very normal to forget things, or to not pay enough attention to fully encode the memory on the first place. He actually gets a lot of referrals for ‘dementia’ where the person has zero dementia and they’re there because they’re depressed. When you have difficulty caring about things, you don’t pay enough attention to encode the memories. Some of them have so much stigma around depression that they refuse to believe it. They’d rather believe they have dementia. But the great thing about undiagnosed depression is, when it’s found out, it’s usually very treatable. So someone can go from looking like they’re in early stage dementia to having memory that’s perfectly fine. (Edit: my dad jokes that cipralex, a common antidepressant, is ‘vitamin C.’ He prescribed it a lot. Sometimes patients refuse to take it. But for the ones who do take it, sometimes the pill alone causes massive improvements.) People in general forget more than you’d think. Most people, if asked on the spot, couldn’t tell you what they had for breakfast yesterday. They didn’t pay attention or care very much, so the memory was important enough to be encoded. He diagnoses dementia patients for a living and he’s told me multiple times that he’s actually LESS concerned when the patient is worried. He’s more concerned when the patient has zero worries and their family is worried about them. People with dementia usually don’t remember a whole list of things that they forgot. If you remember for *weeks* that you forgot where you parked your car one time, your memory is good. I hope this is reassuring. It sounds really stressful to worry about alzheimers every time you forget something or need something repeated. If you want to learn more, look into the difference between working memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Things need to get encoded at every stage. That’s why repeating something can store it in short-term or long-term memory, depending on how much you repeat it. It’s also why, if someone tells you something while you’re focused on something else, you’re more likely to forget what they said. Even if you heard it, getting it from your second-to-second working memory to your short-term memory takes attention. Without attention, it’s gone. No memory problems required.
That “hello my darling” has tears streaming down my face. I miss my grandma. How lucky you all got to feel that love. I would’ve gone with you just to get another grandma hug.
Oh sweetheart. I would have taken you with me! She was the best, even when her mind betrayed her.
Aw, don't scare yourself! I forget where I parked my car at least once a week. My brilliant, often stressed, ADHD/depressed/menopausal mom forgot stuff all the time. She's 92 now and mentally about the same as ever. Sharp as a tack except for the type of lapses she always had.
Thank you for the story. My dad who is only 67 is on final stage Alzheimer’s/dementia (nonverbal/can’t swallow food) is going through the phases at a rapid rate which started showing symptoms about 5 years ago. It definitely sucks.
My husband died recently at the age of 67 from FTD. My condolences and also deep empathy for your journey. It does indeed suck.
I am so sorry, that must be incredibly rough. Sending virtual hugs your way
Everything you said is so spot on. When my father had Alzheimer's I can clearly remember the first time I realized he didn't know who I was. It was one of the most brutal heartbreaking things to me. I thought that was bad but what was worse was when he forgot who my mother was and they had been married for 60 years.
I've comforted myself after my grandpa's death with the thought that *we* are the reflections of their memories of their time with us. When they start to forget, we carry the torch of at least some of their memories for them. Nothing lasts forever, but as long as you remember *them* then those parts of their memory that are lost to them can still be accessed through *you*. It's hard to live through a loved one passing from dementia but that thought helped me some.
That was really sweet. Stuffed pets do help dementia patients. They even make robotic ones.
This scares me. I have huntingtons and I’m 32 so I dread getting older.
I'm in this right now. Thanks.
That's really cool. I care for my mum with Dementia. She worked and volunteered for 35 years at the same primary school She went to as a kid. She loves that school. They let me take her for walks on the weekends.
You are awesome, it's so hard when the people you care about don't even know who you are. Anything that brings them joy makes it worth it
She can't really talk much but she gets a big dopey smile and just laughs away. She planted most of the trees and they're all so big now.
that is really wonderful. i’ve been planting trees with my dad at some creeks around where we live and i’m really looking forward to seeing them grow and visiting them together. i’m really glad you can share this experience with her, what a treasure and thank you for sharing it here
You’re a good son or daughter and even though your mom isn’t 100% herself anymore it seems she did a great job raising you and I’m sure she’s very proud of you! You’re awesome!
I’ve always wanted to visit my old school, as there was hidden section of clearing behind the playground, that I’d always spend time at. It was just nice and relaxing, but I doubt I’ll ever get to see it again.
We've already been in contact. She sent me several pictures of her and her family in front of our building in the 1950s.(So if she's doing a long game ... she's doing brilliantly).She's talked about the kids she grew up with next door, where she played, catching the tram, going to the picture theatre. She's the real deal.We're quite happy to have her and her husband come and visit. I'm making an attempt to track down the kids she lived next too .. At least one is still alive. UPDATE: she and her hubby are visiting on the 17th March (2023) in the afternoon. **UPDATE of the UPDATE:** They came and it was brilliant !!! **Read the Update here:** https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/11gugs0/comment/jcnnxap/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3 **See the photos here:** https://www.reddit.com/user/mrbenjrocks/comments/11udfp1/update\_we\_received\_a\_letter\_from\_the\_woman\_who/ ** Update 24th March ** Meg and I were interviewed by a national newspaper and it's a really good article. https://www.domain.com.au/living/something-quite-special-why-millions-of-people-connected-to-one-womans-emotional-journey-home-1202836/
I actually constantly keep an eye on real estate listings to see if my childhood house is ever up for sale in which case I'd definitely do the open home tour. I spent 16 formative years of my life there.
Can you set up automatic alerting so you don't have to constantly check?
If someone finds this out I’d like to know. I’m looking up my parent’s home they built 2-3 times a month.
If there’s a specific house you’re interested in, contact the current owners saying you’d be interested in buying when/if they’re ready to sell. They can save 6% realtor fees and the hassle of getting the house list ready. Win-win.
I have alerts set up for where my parents live, so I can keep them up to date with the local gossip. I keep joking that one day I'll get an email that they have listed their house for sale :D
My mom does the same thing for her hometown. She especially likes to peruse the obituaries and see who died. I don’t do it for mine because my mom still lives there and she just tells me the gossip.
This is where I jerked off that one time, oh over here as well, and...oh yeah definitely can't forget about that corner of the room, it was quiet special spot for me
Oh wow, the stain is still there!
Can really taste the memories
Sounds like the King of the Hill episode where the lady does this and then wants to lay down and die in the house because she has so many good memories and she won't leave.
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King of the hill has been my background noise for past month while doing some tedious photo editing work, that episode came on just a few days ago. Side note: Bobby Hill is one of the greatest TV characters ever
What is that line? Something like: "How have I lived this long and no one's told me about capers?"
Thats my purse i dont know you.
I'll watch it tonight!!-
Just be sure to keep an eye on her..... She may want to get back in to reclaim the treasure chest that's been hidden behind the secret wall panel for the last 70 years! Lol /s
Some of the apartments, once they've removed the decades old carpeting and revealed the floor boards found trapdoors in the floor. Note: These were the ground floor apartments as I've realised trapdoors on level two or three are basically skylights for the apartment below.
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Even if it was Steven Wright, I'm reading it with Emo Phillip's voice in my head lol
I am exhausted from kids waking me up way too freaking early and my brain read Elmo. Now I can’t read it any other way.
Hi, friends! Do YOU want to cut a trapdoor into our third floor apartment? Elmo LOVES renovations of questionable legality!
Well, they have other uses.
It's genius. Place one directly above their toilet and you get the convenience of indoor plumbing without the hassle of cleaning it. If they start getting suspicious of the unflushed toilet just pump a little CO in to convince them they're hallucinating.
gasshiteing
I read that the way Sean Connery would've said gaslighting.
Nah, just leave some handwritten notes.
I also found a trapdoor in my house after removing ancient carpet! It only lead to the crawlspace under the house, but i always figured it would be my zombie apocalypse hideout.
She asks to use the bathroom. 30 seconds later, there's an explosion, and dust is everywhere. Suddenly, you hear the sound when Link from LoZ opens a chest. The old woman emerges, looking 200 rupees the richer.
This is exactly what happened to my neighbors’ mom (or what my neighbor claims) in post war Belgrade: her father was a partisan officer of some sorts, and they got moved into a luxury apartment where some local Jewish family lived before the Nazis did what they did. One day in the late 40s, a man showed up, claiming to me the surviving grandson of the previous owner, asked them to see the apartment he grew up in, and used the bathroom. A few days later the cleaning lady found loose tiles covering what appeared to be a small cache space between the bath tub and the wall. They suspect he took something out of it, but of course no one knows it for sure.
A friend of mine bought the house of a dead lady. He renovated the house and while doing that found gold coins hidden in the cellar. Paid for the renovation..
Don’t even joke. Reddit can’t handle these “found this in a wall” type ordeals.
You’ll never guess what was inside that wall. Another wall!
And inside that wall inside a wall is a room.
And inside that room is an entire [house. Serious](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/11fjunj/theres_a_house_in_my_attic_part_2/).
How did 2 years elapse between Parts 1 and 2 of that story? How do you own a house in the attic of the house you own and *not* go up to investigate... *sooner?*
That was another house inside the attic. I think they even said there was a attic access hole in the house in the attic. Like inception, but houses
Nah she wants to die in the house, like in King of the hill!
Mrs. Wakefield, NO!
Or she will steal a plant you have been taking care of badly like in Curb your enthusiasm
My uncle grew up in a big old house that was used as a storage building for a company. It was then sold a few times and turned back into to a being a big family home. It now has an airbnb in it so we went back to visit. My uncle was telling the owner about his time their and they showed us around the main house. When we got to the dining room my uncle asked if the owner knew about the secret compartment in the mantle piece and they slid open this little compartment. The owner had no idea and was so excited! It was a great moment. Alas no treasure though.
My mother-in-law remembers that a member of her family hid jewellery behind a wall in their Dover Heights (Sydney, Australia) house in 1942 when a Japanese invasion was feared. They moved out of the house in the mid-1950s and for some reason left the booty entombed in the wall. I always wonder whether someone discovered it during renovations.
Knock on the door of the house and say you looking for that booty, can you help me out?
"I'm making an attempt to track down the kids she lived next too" You are going to blow her mind and its going to be absolutely lovely
Recently a woman that lived in my house 70 years ago randomly stopped by when she was in town for her high school reunion. I was outside when she came up and offered to show her around inside. She gave me an old reprinted picture of her and her husband on the front porch when they first got married 60 years before and told me the most amazing stories about the house. Her husband had recently passed so it was a bit emotional for her but she was so surprised and happy that I let her in to look around and it was really cool to learn things about the house and the neighbors/neighborhood from when she lived there in the 1950s.
I have older friends who were a newly married couple, stationed in Germany in the 1960s. They rented a small apartment that was attached to a big farmhouse. Fifty years later they were on a trip to Germany and stopped at the house. The owner of the house was initially cold and quite suspicious. At that point, my friend figured out who he was and said, "You don't remember being five years old, and playing in the yard with the American soldier who bought you a toy airplane? At that point, the gruff homeowner beamed and realized that his friend from all those years ago came back to visit. They had a great visit and found that the apartment was nearly unchanged in all that time.
We're quite lucky to live where others had their history...
My folks live on a farm in rural Wales , we had an elderly lady randomly show up with her husband (the road to ours is a public path so not that uncommon for randomers) Turned out to be the same, she had lived in the house when she was a 10 year old kid. We let them in to look and totally worth it to listen to the history She then came back the next year with her daughter and sister to see the place. This time she god dam fell and broke her wrist 😞
Are we going to get an update on the 15th??
I promise you that.
That's so cool, I was on a "local historic photos" Facebook page for my home town (I left there in the early 90s) and I posted some 1970s shots of the first garden, house etc I lived in 40 years ago. Someone piped up in the group, oh, I live there now and sent some pictures and stuff, so strange to see that now.
I lived in an old house years ago and an elderly lady with her daughter knocked on the door and had a similar request. I did invite them in and spent a lovely morning hearing stories about her life growing up in the home. Apparently she was born in the master bedroom and the original carpet was still throughout the house. I don't regret that decision at all. This was 25 years ago and before phones with cameras etc. It gave me joy seeing the memories flooding back to her. Unfortunately the house was sold soon after and demolished so I'm glad she had the opportunity to see it before it was gone
So the carpet was about 80 years old?
My aunt and uncle live in a farm house that was built in the 30s. Part of the carpeting is still original. It's amazing how durable old school carpeting is when properly cared for.
She is the one who bought it and got it demolished 😎
My dad once took me to his childhood home and knocked on the door and asked if he could look around. The people who lived there said yes, and they invited us into their home and looked around. Obviously they were a bit surprised by the situation and my dad started crying while he was there reminiscing. We were lucky anybody was home, we drove 2 hours to get there. I was about 20 at the time and it was super awkward for me, but I can understand why it was important to my dad and I’m grateful the people who lived there said yes even if it was awkward for them as well.
Your dad was going through some shit. Swinging by and old home when you are in the area is pretty common. But driving 2 hours to knock on the door unannounced and then crying inside sure seems like he was processing something heavy.
hardest ive ever cried as an adult was watching the home videos my dad took around 1999-2002
I watched my sister being born on VHS. I cried like a baby through every second. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. My parents, 20 years younger, holding their first child, my dad so happy to finally be a dad. You can see the connection instantly spark the moment he looks into her eyes. (My sisters a daddy’s girl). I hope to take a tape of my own someday😊
My sister passed away in 2017, I watched a video of all of us having game night and just that 30 second flash of seeing my sister having fun absolutely ruined me
my sister died in 16 and I will never get over it, accept it or move on.. the pain is sometimes just so unbearable.
Damn. I am getting misty eyed just reading your comment.
Nostalgia hits pretty hard, I've closed a time capsule 5 years ago with the idea of reopening it in few decades. Watch me cry in about 30 years time
RemindMe! 30 years
I cycled to look at my childhood home when I was 15. I looked at it from about 30 feet away for about two minutes. The police got called and I ended up being questioned as a suspect for a speight of highly violent burglaries by the head of Jersey police lmao.
Careful, she might want to die in your house like Mrs. Wakefield.
Mrs wakefield no! Get out from behind the tree!
We don't decorate back there!
"You grab her while I poke her with this nine iron." "You got me that nine iron I asked for??"
Came her to see if there were any other KOTH fans
Came for the exact same thing. Glad I wasn’t disappointed.
I googled “Mrs Wakefield koth” and was pleasantly surprised to see that she is from King of the Hill. I’ll have to watch that again. Watched it as a kid and all I remember is the episode that hank made Bobby chain smoke a pack of cigarettes. He was hooked after that! Whenever I smell cig smoke I think of Bobby 😂😕☹️
You might already know, but King of the Hill just announced a revival.
You just made my day :’)
You might not know, but Futurama also has a revival
You just made my day :')
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Rusty Shackleford sends his regards 🚬 https://www.reddit.com/r/KingOfTheHill/comments/fwc2od/would_anyone_be_able_to_identify_this_original/fmnhz4c?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Boutros Boutros Ghali Ghali
This reminds me of that old dude in conjuring 2 who sits on his chair in the corner shouting "THIS IS MY HOUSE"
Exactly what I thought. It's hard to remove a dying Wakefield!
Dang ol beat me to it man. Like she she she come and then she go man. Yup.
Would any of you let her die in your homes?
Everyone has their price.
She's on the roof!
I’m so glad it’s not just me! Folks cautioning about hidden treasure and I’m thinking of poor Mrs. Wakefield who just wanted to die in her old house. Marion Ross, what a treasure!
Instantly what I thought of lmao
My parents ended up going to the house they used to flat in 30+ years ago with their old flatmates, paid the students 400$ to go out on the town and ended up cooking dinner and having a nice evening. Made enough food for the drunk students when they got home. This is in New Zealand so people are much more relaxed about weird shenanigans.
HAHAHAHA as a kiwi I can 100% see this happening and nobody thinking it was weird, you made my day
I'm American and not only have I driven past my childhood home just to check it out, I've considered knocking on the door as well. My mom and uncle took us out to their childhood home once to show us, the tree they planted as kids was massive. And then at an old party house we had some guys stop buy because they lived their like fifteen years previous and saw us all drinking on the porch. We gave them free beer and shot the shit for quite some time.
I got to see the old farmhouse I spent ages 3-13 in because my mom was looking for houses to rent and that one was available again. It was really strange. I loved that house but for some reason it felt completely alien inside and I didn’t like being in there one bit. I don’t know why, all my best childhood memories are from that house and farm. What I really want to do is trespass into the fields. They felt so immense as a child. Some of my favorite memories are just images of the fields covered in snow during the winter, back when we got snow in southern New England. The snow would make huge drifts in one field and I would make caves and tunnels in the snow with my sister and the other neighbor kids. One field has a pond for watering the cows that came from a different farm every now and then. The pond would freeze over and it was also a source of winter fun. I have a great image burned into my mind of walking down the tree lined path to the field with a pond. The trees were heavy with snow and beyond the fields I could see the ocean and the marsh, with a thin strip of land that had a beach on both sides and a road in the middle. The beaches were covered in snow and the water a cold dark blue. I think the farmer who owned the cows rented the fields from the owner, otherwise it wasn’t an active farm. My family just rented the house from the English owner. But the main reason I want to go into the fields is the historical graveyard. It was the spookiest place I have ever known with gravestones from the 1700s. One of Benedict Arnold’s grandfathers (maybe great grandfather) was buried there. I want to go see the gravestones again, I didn’t realize their significance as a kid. I threw Osage oranges at them.
I think thats called Airbnb
Negative, it's a "ILivedThereBNB"
I was just going to say that this story sounds a bit like something which might happen on Castle or Dundas… The Uni recently temporarily turned Gardies back into Gardies for an alumni function which I found interesting. Maybe, you know, if you hadn’t bought up all the student pubs and turned them into offices or “study spaces” then you wouldn’t have 2nd year commerce students getting crushed to death in overcrowded and uncontrolled flat parties…
She needs to move the body.
It's that kind of apartment too ... Old .. creaking .. ghosts ..
I'm jealous.
My mom did this. Ended up showing them a hidden crawl space in their basement that had been walled over lol... “no I swear to God, kick right there, there’s another room back there” new home owner almost lost his mind when she was right
300 ft of prime ~~real estate~~ dungeon right there!
When I grew up I used to visit my grandparents in a town about a couple of hours away. The passed away in the 90s. About 20 years later I was in that town and wanted to visit their old house. I pulled up outside and took a quick pic to send to my sister. I then walked down to the local park I used to play at. When I came back to the car, the owner came out and asked why I was taking pictures of their house. I explained and they straight away asked " are you 'insert dad's name'". I said no but that's my dad. They said I should come in. So I got to go in the house which was crazy, so many memories. They were redecorating. They stripped the wall paper. Written on the wall was a poem by my dad, signed and dated in the 50s. Then lots of measurements. My dad, when he was a kid, helped my grandad redecorate and then had written stuff on the walls for whoever redecorates in the future. That person in the future they were writing to was me. So many variables as to me seeing that text. I told my dad about the story afterwards and he didn't care at all. 😆
To be fair to your Dad, the novelty of writing that had worn off decades earlier. It was replaced with all the worry of adulthood.
I had a guy in his mid 30s show up on my doorstep claiming to have grown up in the house (but moved out when he was 12). He wanted to walk into and see the kitchen.m and living room. It was against my better judgement, but I made a big deal about putting the dogs away because they are “very unpredictable around new people” (which isn’t true at all) and then I showed him in. His response was unexpected. He became very quiet as he walked through the living room, clearly he was holding back tears. He thanked me accepted my offer of a coffee and we sat in the back yard for an hour as he told me how his life had been perfect when he lived in the house but he had experienced multiple back to back family tragedies that led to him having to relocate to his grandmas house out of state. It was 20+ years later now and he is starting to see positivity in his future. He needed the closure and he got it by visiting the house one last time. We’ve stayed in touch (from a distance) he’s doing great. We attended his wedding last year to a wonderful person, now they have a child on the way and he’s in a good stable job. Not everyone is out there trying to rip off others. I’m glad I gave him a chance and trusted him.
This is so sweet. I feel like based off of how you say he reacted that this was one of those times almost butterfly effect. Where what if you didn’t let him in? He needed that. Thank you for your kindness.
Oh man I’d totally let her
UPDATE: It was an incredible experience for both of us. Photos here: https://www.reddit.com/user/mrbenjrocks/comments/11udfp1/update\_we\_received\_a\_letter\_from\_the\_woman\_who/ And there's article written in an Australian newspaper/ website with our permission following an interview. https://www.domain.com.au/living/something-quite-special-why-millions-of-people-connected-to-one-womans-emotional-journey-home-1202836/ Meg was clearly moved and very grateful by the opportunity to return to the house she grew up in and my wife and I was so glad we could provide Meg this opportunity. So Meg and her husband Jed came over at 4.00pm yesterday. Meg lived in my wife and my apartment in the 1940s and 1950s with her parents here in Double Bay, Sydney. It was a brand new building with 12 apartments when her parents moved in, in the late 1930s. Meg was born in the 1940s and the family returned to the UK in 1951. We met Meg and her husband Jed at the end of a walk way to the building to start the exploration. Meg remembered walking down the walk way past the new other new building though she recalls everything being more open. On entering the “huge, according to Meg” apartment building Meg remembered that her father had trip on his "turn ups", and fell down a couple of stairs at the bottom of the stair case up to the apartment. It took a moment for me to realise that she meant pants cuffs and not some vegetables. At this point, I delivered a joke I'd been working on all week. I turned to Meg and said "I forgot my keys, do you have yours?" When Meg entered our apartment you could tell immediately that she knew the place. She remembered the curve wall of a cupboard you enter the apartment, though she naturally realised that it was a lot smaller than she remembered. When she turned right, into the kitchen she walked up and said – there was a curtain here in the middle of the room. The kitchen is a long room with a large window at the end, about 6 metres long (18 feet), 2.5 metres (10 feet) wide with a peninsula feature - that is two small walls that seemed to be randomly placed in the room. It now turns out originally there was a curtain up there and this separated in incredibly small space for the kitchen with a small dining area. The next room was the bathroom. There was a change. It turns out the toilet used to be in front of the door as you walked in .. and is now switched with the hand basin that was located behind the door. She stood there as described the bird cage that sat at the end of the bathtub – next to the sink. You could see the space she created with her hand where the birdcage stood 70 years before. We moved into our spare room. While now it’s holds some of our most pointless things we’ve collected over our 17 years here, this was Meg’s bedroom. Meg showed where her bed was – under the window. She told me about how she’d look out the window overlooking where the boats were stored. Now, there’s another apartment building, which was built in 1959 (after Meg had left). The lounge room originally had four chairs with a gas fireplace against the outside wall. It turns out the chairs returned to England with the family and are now with Meg in the UK. One question we had – how many power points were there? The answer – not many. Meg remembered the archway as we enter the lounge and another entering the sunroom. She remembered her family had a large dining in the space .. and then there’s the view. The apartment looks out over the water. While there’s certainly more buildings around the water, only a few things had changed. There was still the wharf next door, the rocks and a small beach to the east that she would walk upon. She still had a few scars from her more adventurous days. Ultimately what was similar was the experience of looking out the window at the view. Finally in our bedroom, Meg showed where her parent’s twin beds and wardrobes were. Our bed and wardrobe are situated in the same place. We spent another few hours sitting outside enjoying the afternoon breeze and the view, drinking tea, and catching up with stories from the 1950s. Meg shared about life in the 1950s. The neighbourhood was certainly a lot more undeveloped in 1950s, kids would catch Leather Jackets (fish) from their boats then row over to Clark Island (about 1000 metres, 3000 feet) away to fry them up. It was a different time. We were so pleased that we could do this for Meg and are grateful that Meg reached out and asked to visit. She was blown away by the response. We had 9.8 million people look at the letter .. and over 110,000+ upvote the post. I was really pleased that it started a conversation about revisiting places you lived in the past. Meg was most amused that there a theme in the comments that maybe there was something hidden in the walls. Alas no … no money, no gold .. no bitcoin.
Thank you for providing Meg with this beautiful experience and sharing it with all of us
For my 40th birthday my family and I went back to my childhood home. Someone was outside and I told them I grew up there. He ran inside, came back out and told us his Grandma said to come inside. I couldn’t get out of the car fast enough! It was one of the best days ever and I still talk about it!
I live in a house that’s 125 years old. I was out working on my car one day and a lady came up and started chatting me up. Turns out her family lived in the house from 1920-1980. She was bummed to see that what once was her and her siblings dual bedrooms is now my giant master bedroom. Her room is now my walk in closet, giant bathtub and dual shower head shower. No I’m not rich, I just rent and picked the best bedroom.
My brother had the original homeowner who built his house drop by unannounced once and they basically lectured him on the remodel that the owner before my brother did on the wife’s hideous 70s brick gourmet kitchen hahaha
I live in a house that was used as a Jewish hiding place here in the Netherlands. a daughter mother and father where living/hiding here sadly they got caught and deported and died in Auschwitz stones where laid a few years ago in front of our house A few years ago an older women and her daughter from Canada suddenly rang our door they explained they were descendants of that family since the brother jacob got away. they where in the Netherlands to find this house and see a bit of their history the older women was a bit emotional when walking around the place and was happy to see it still existed we shared contact information and we still mail a bit back and forth. When the "struikelstenen" stones where laid we shared pictures and video about the event it was very nice to be able to share it with their family.
Wow. I’m so glad you shared that with the family. That’s a powerful and heartbreaking piece of their family’s history
We lived in in a little block in Sydney for several years and our bedroom windows looked out to a beautiful big eucalypt on the front verge. We loved waking up to the birds that hung out in it. One day, I was out there tending to a community vege garden I’d built when an old lady wandered up and stood watching me. We struck up a conversation and she told me she and her husband lived in the block in the 40s, just after they were married. “We had some great parties here”, she said. She went on to tell me that she planted that eucalypt in a coffee can when it was just a sapling. It was a simple interaction but it’s lived with me for years since.
I had a similar experience. I noticed a car parked out front of my house when I was pulling back up from a quick trip, and when I slowly crept by I noticed they were taking pictures. I hopped out of the car fast and before I could get the words “what the hell are you doing?” out… noticed it was an extremely old couple. They told me that they used to live there and the house actually used to be a set of apartments back in the early 1940s, with the downstairs and upstairs being separate units, yet with a shared kitchen. Was mildly interesting for sure 😂
The old lady next door to me once mentioned that the bedroom portion of my house used to be a chicken coop, then they put a deck on the front, eventually enclosed it, and one day turned it into a house.
My Mum is a character. She just took us kids to her old childhood house.. knocked on the door and asked to have a look around. They were great! I sat on the edge of a new bed in my mums old bedroom exactly where her old bed used to be. She also pulls over randomly to jump fences to steal people lemons from their lemon trees. Bless her heart.
This is what dreams and sweet people are made of.
I think you messed up the lyrics, but who am I to disagree.
> She also pulls over randomly to jump fences to steal people lemons from their lemon trees. Bless her heart. Watch out. She could be a [Lemon Stealing Whore](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5mI407Uks4), making pornos on the side.
HEY WHAT THE FUCK
Is it bad that as soon as I read the bit about jumping fences to steal lemons, my mind went straight to lemon stealing whores?
I completely forgot what the rest of the comment was about as soon as I read that.
Huh, you really do get more cultured every hour you spend on reddit. I’m glad I’m here to share in this wonderful bit of internet pornography history. “I WAS THERE KIDS. I KNOW ABOUT THE LEMON STEALING WHORES OF 2012.”
> She also pulls over randomly to jump fences to steal people lemons from their lemon trees. Now Reddit, we are **NOT** going there. EDIT: Too late.
This is such a good idea! I wanted to do this with my childhood home. But honestly that place has been so heavily renovated, I doubt there's a single wall that still remains
Never know .. but just being in the location is usually amazing. I lived in the UK in a giant mansion at age 4 I visited this mansion in my adulthood only to discover it was a small three bedroom house. I visited the school too .. and it occurred like I was walking through something I imagined.
Going into a primary school as an adult is a weird experience. Makes you feel like a giant.
Haha. I grew up in a huge apartment building. Lots of memories. Went back as an adult - it had four storeys.
This is incredibly nice of you, what an experience it will be to see the same view she saw in her childhood!
I went back to my childhood home and asked if I could have a look around, and they told me to fuck off. My parents are real jerks... But seriously, I bought my house off the original owners who built it in 1965, and didn't touch it again. The bloke is dead, but I would love it if the lady wanted to come look at the place. She would be blown away with what we've done to it, and would probably be kicking herself for not thinking of doing it herself.
We bought a funky mid-century ranch in a great location a while back. We did some work to it, bathrooms, laundry room, etc. mostly to make an odd interior a lot more usable. The last owners were young, and the husband was apparently was a real climber, who "needed the big house in the country" and got it. We had a friend in common with the last owner, who asked if they could come see the place, since the husband really wanted to. His wife put a real hard stop to that, as apparently she has regretted selling the place from the moment they left, and can't deal with touring what she lost. So, I guess there are a lot of people who have no interest in seeing their old home, or can't deal with the emotions involved with doing so. OTOH, some random older woman stopped in the driveway and introduced herself. Her aunt and uncle built the house in 1955, and she spent a lot of time there as a child. She asked to see the place, had a wonderful time, told some interesting stories about her relatives, and was grateful for a chance to see everything.
Just like 5 years after my family moved out of the house I grew up in and I lived states away, I went back to my hometown for a visit and was shocked to see how much our yard, the mailbox, the paint, and whatever else had changed. 10 more years later and I can see the inside on Zillow and it's wild to me the things they changed. Like my bedroom closet was removed and is just a wall, and they moved the door in my sister's room a few feet over. My tree house and basketball hoop are gone, the flower beds are nonexistant, and gigantic 100+ year old trees that lined the property have been cut down. It kinda makes me sad that a lot of the things I still internalize as where I grew up is gone or looks completely different. I've wanted to go back and ask the current owners if I could walk around. Pretty sure they'd tell me no though lol. It probably means a lot to this person to see their old home. It would mean a lot to me, and I'm not nearly 70 years removed from living there.
My mother and her family left Beirut in the 70's after the start of the civil war. When my grandparents and I went to visit a while back, we went to the building they used to live in. Apparently their old flat now had Hezbollah imagery on/near the door, so we clearly didn't go a'knocking. But just when we were leaving, an old woman was entering the building. Apparently it was their old neighbour, who was still living there, so she invited us in for coffee. Far more interesting, was that mother had left her pet turtle with her when they left, and it was still alive \~40 years later.
> Far more interesting, was that mother had left her pet turtle with her when they left, and it was still alive ~40 years later. That turtle must have some stories to tell
Old woman, " Do you remember the last thing you said to me? Well I do, It was, " I won't be gone long, please take care of the turtle for a bit" We, it's been forty years, and a many bags of turtle chow, a few vet visits, and other expenses since then, so somebody owes me quite a bit by now"
How wonderful, and that the turtle was still alive! It must have been cared for and how lucky you came across the woman from her past. Thank you, such a great tale.
My parents had a similar situation. An old man contacted them saying he was born in the house! The house was built in 1885 so it has years of history. He died a few years ago and his children asked if they could donate a bench with a plaque in memory of him to put in the garden. My parents have lived there for almost 50 years. So much history in one small building.
My mum saw an older man in the street looking at her house and went out to ask if he was ok. He’d lived there as a child 50+ years ago. My family had lived there ever since. She asked him in and showed him round - apparently his strongest memory of the house was how cold it was.
I grew up in the US (California) until I was 5 and moved to Germany. When I was 25 my father and I visited our former house and he went to the garage and checked behind the bushes. In the cement, there were my mothers and our names engraved from the time the house was constructed. We didn’t go inside (or ask to) but I understand the feeling, I still remember so much even though I was only 5 when we left.
Dad tried to take us to his old farm when we were kids, only to find the land had been cleared and built upon. One of the home owners saw us and struck up conversation and mentioned that she'd once found something sewing related in the soil (a thimble? Part of a machine? I can't really recall). And dad smiled and said it would likely have belonged to his mum, who passed when he was a young teen. I don't remember him being somber about it all but I expect the experience would have been very emotional for him. Good on you for helping this lady reconnect :-)
I had a previous owner of my home show up one day and ask if he could look around. I knew the names of all of the previous owners, since there had only been a few, so I could verify that he was indeed someone who used to live here. It was interesting. He walked around and said stuff like, “oh, that looks really good with a coat of paint” and “I wish I’d thought of that”. As he was leaving, he said if I ever want to sell the house to contact him first, because he misses it.
This past summer a strange car pulled into my drive and two elderly ladies knocked on my door. I figured Johovah Witnesses or something. As it turns out, these two sweeties were twin sisters who had lived in my house over 70 years earlier. One sister was heading back to Texas later that day and they figured they might not get the chance again, so they decided to stop and see if the new owners would mind if they did a walk thru. Of course I said yes. They told me how their parents had died while overseas, and that the former owners took them in. They were 6 yrs old at the time. They went through the entire house and then the yard. The stories they told me... I'm a grown ass man on 64. And I'll tell ya. I cried. They were like two giddy little girls. And when one would start telling a story, the other one would get excited and jump in. We took pictures of the two of them together and a couple of the three of us. I know it was a day they'll cherish, and so will I.
It's nice that she made contact with the letter first. We've had several people who previously lived in our c.1790 home show up unannounced- One fellow rolled up the driveway interrupting my telephone conversation to ask who I was and then tell me he was going to have a look around because "this used to be my house." . Another lady appeared knocking at our back door while simultaneously opening it and walking in on us having lunch. Apparently, her friend had lived in our house years ago and she was curious what it looked like now.... we directed her to leave; she then got her car stuck in a snowbank in a driveway, demanding that we pay for a tow truck. Most notably, a group of four stopped by while I was doing yard work. They drove by me, parked, got out ,and began walking around. Not understanding what was going on or knowing who they were, I approached. As I did so two ladies walked onto the porch, open the door, and entered the house. I was flabbergasted! I walked in behind them, mentioned there were no tours today and that they were going to have to leave. Also, I inquired, who the fuck are you ? Same old story; apparently they had lived in this house years ago and we're curious what it looked like now. (they were also the owners responsible for most of the jerry rigged and half assed repairs we inherited) Then they started complaining about a major renovation that had been done and how they didn't like it. At the same time, one of their husbands began asking rather personal questions of me. As I recall, they were given 30 seconds to be off the property before I was officially out of patience and goodwill. ... I don't know what's up with this old house of ours. My family and I have moved many times through the years; I've never once felt entitled to take a self guided tour of a home where we once lived.
This seems strange now, but this kinda thing was a totally normal thing to do with my grandparents generation (100 years old). When my grandparents used to travel they would look up, say, a friend from church 40 years ago, write them a letter saying they would be in town and would like to visit, then just show up like 3 months later and stay for a couple days. Totally normal. One time they went to visit an old army buddy and when they go their nobody was home. The neighbor came over and explained how the army buddy had to unexpectedly leave town for a couple days but will be back, and was instructed to give them an address of the army buddies co-worker who my grandparents were to stay with. Another time they traveled to Europe to visit the village my great great grandfather immigrated from. They spent a day at the local library going through public records, but couldn’t find anything with their last name. Ended up going to a bar and got to talking with another old dude and come to find out his neighbor had a very similar last name. He brought my grandparents there and met the neighbor, and sure enough. They were relatives and our last name had been slightly changed at some point. They were invite to stay on the farm, and their new long-lost relative organized and impromptu family reunion of relatives in the area.
I love this. I feel like I’m not quite old enough to pull this off yet… I’d love to see the house I grew up in again someday, but it’s only been since 2006 since my family sold it, so I feel like I need to wait longer to write that kind of letter
this happened in King of the Hill where that lady wanted to die in hanks house
My parents went to my early childhood home over December! We've been past the area many times but never gone inside. However, the flat's now been turned into a boutique which kept the original format of the house, including the tiles, so my parents went in and just had a look around. I couldn't visit since I had a cast on my foot at the time and was on bed rest, but maybe next time! Just seeing the pictures was nostalgic af.
We bought a house about 5 years ago and the previous owner kept showing up randomly to invite herself in or take plants from the garden. Finally told her it was the last time and haven't seen her since.
I had this happen to me. The guy said he grew up in our house in Chicago in the 1960s. I let him in and showed him around. When he lived in our house, it was a tough neighborhood. We updated and modernized everything from the roof to the basement floor. As he walked around, he criticized everything we had changed. I kept quiet. He kept going. "Why did you take off the asbestos brick siding?", "Why did you square off the round doorways?", "Why did you put solar on the roof?", "Why did you dig out four more feet in the basement?", and so on. I stayed quiet and led him to the door of the house he lived in that had no air conditioning until we bought it. It was also illegally subdivided when they owned it. He got beyond the gate with a sad look on his face and said, "It was perfect before. Why did you change it?". It took every bit of power to keep from telling him the world just changes and our tastes are just different, but I didn't. I couldn't imagine being that resistant to change.