19 Shocking Life Stories Grandma And Grandpa Randomly Decided To Drop One Day

I don't know about you, but sometimes my family members randomly decide to drop the WILDEST piece of lore about their lives and I am left... speechless.

Like, one day, my grandma randomly decided to tell me that when she came to the US, she left behind a fiancé whom she had never spoken to again. At this point, she had been married to my late grandfather for 60+ years, and no one in my family, her children included, knew this lore. I imagine she carried this secret her entire life, and for some reason, perhaps knowing she was at the end of her life, she felt it was time to let it out.

I had a sneaking suspicion that other people had similar stories to share about Gram or Gran dropping random fun facts about their lives. I've also heard that people at the end of their lives tend to air out their unspoken history — bombshells, dirty laundry, and secrets included. SO, I turned it over to the BuzzFeed Community to tell me all the wild bombshells their grandparents decided to drop one day. Here's everything they shared:

1. "As my grandmother's dementia got worse, she began telling unfiltered stories of her early life. One of those was that she was tasked with protecting her village's walls and how she loved shooting down people who tried to get through. Also, my father found out that his brother, my uncle, is only his half brother. They don't share a dad. She talked about those things like we already knew them. Needless to say, we were all shocked."

2. "My grandpa, a few years ago, got very sick and believed he would die. He called my dad to his side to tell him he had a secret he felt his children should know: the oldest brother in the family of five kids was actually not his son. My grandma was in early pregnancy from an affair with a Spanish artist when he met her. He fell in love, and they agreed to raise the oldest son as his without anyone ever knowing. To my grandpa's credit, none of the five children had a clue; he genuinely treated the eldest like his son."

"Spoiler: my grandpa did not die, and my grandma still didn't want anyone to know and was furious at him for telling. She refused to ever discuss it, and their relationship was contentious for the last few years of their lives. But my uncle was happy to know the truth. His father was dead already, but he managed to learn a bit about him and his art, and the general feeling in the family was that my grandpa did right by sharing this."

— scerickson

3. Similarly, "When my dad was in his 40s, his mother was ill and thought she would die. She confessed to my dad that she got pregnant with him at 17 years old by a military man who didn't know about it and who had gone overseas. Being such a scandal in the '40s, she quickly married the man I know as my grandpa, had my dad, and many other children. My dad told me he always felt like an outsider in his family and looked very different from his siblings. Still, he was shook. But the more awkward thing is that she didn't die, and then we just all knew this shocking secret for the next 20 years or so until she passed away. Wild!"

—Anonymous

4. "When we were driving in the middle of nowhere, bush all around, and she said, 'My old town used to be there.' Then she explained that the town of about 100 people had burned to the ground, and she was one of about 25 survivors. They survived by getting in the nearby lake and staying there all night with only her nose and mouth out to try and breathe. She was 14, and her whole family made it out alive but lost absolutely everything they had and had to start over from scratch. 'But that's just how it was back then.'"

5. "My grandpa's last name isn't actually his given last name because he changed it while on the run from the cops in his 20s. So, my whole life, I thought my grandpa, grandma, and mom had the 'family' last name. Nope. He never changed it back… and never got caught either 😭😭😭😭"

—Anonymous

6. "My grandfather told me he was a rum runner for Al Capone, and my dad was an enforcer for the local mafia when he was in his teens. He moved on to other things when he entered the Navy, and when he came out, he stayed away. He still met his old boss in Vegas when his sales route took him there. They'd sit at one of the tables with half a dozen bodyguards around. It was wild, and I never found out the boss's name. It's a bummer because I would have liked to know."

7. "My grandmother was stabbed. She worked in a kitchen on the south side of Chicago and was very proud of her job/kitchen. So when a mob enforcer-type came busting in and started demanding things, her short self told him to 'Get the hell out of my kitchen!' He then proceeded to throw a knife at her, and it stuck her in the thigh. But he did leave the kitchen — so she won? It 100% tracks with the spitfire she was all her life."

—Anonymous

8. "My grandfather was in a Philadelphia Irish gang in the '30s called 'The Vipers.' During the height of the depression, bankers would evict people from their homes without warning or allowing them to gather their possessions. They would throw men, women, and children out in the street with only the clothes on their backs. When this would happen in their neighborhood, the Vipers would show up and hold the bankers at bay while the family gathered their things. Most police were working-class Irish and would not intercede. Once, they turned a banker's car over in the street and chased him down Kensington Avenue. I've never been prouder."

9. "My maternal grandmother lived until she was 96 and died in 2006. She confided that she had an abortion between the birth of my mother in 1930 and my aunt in 1934 due to financial reasons during the Great Depression. A private doctor did it for $50 (quite the sum in those days!). Additionally, my mother, her daughter, had an abortion in 1960 because my father had a serious (potentially fatal) medical condition, and she felt she couldn't raise three children alone. A private physician also did it, but she needed a recommendation from two psychiatrists to have it."

10. "My grandmother got pregnant with my aunt at 16 out of wedlock. We all knew this. What we didn't know was that when she found out, she and her friend (who was also pregnant) hitchhiked to another state to escape the consequences from her parents. Police found them a few weeks later and brought them back. Just wild."

—Anonymous

11. "My grandma married at 16 to an abusive alcoholic. By 21, she was divorced with three kids. This was the '50s. She ended up embezzling money from the company she worked for because she couldn't afford to live. She was arrested and put in jail, and her kids were put in foster care. She showed up five years later to get her kids out of foster care and was remarried with two more kids. The man she married got in trouble for embezzlement and was a fugitive, and they ran from state to state from the police. He was caught in the '70s."

12. "Years ago, at a family gathering, I got in a fight with my mother. I went outside to calm myself, and my grandmother followed me. As we sat on the back stoop, she told me a story about her, her mother, and her sisters and the lengths people will go to for those they love. She told me that her mother was dying of breast cancer in the 1970s, which I had known. The bombshell she dropped was that she and her three sisters euthanized their mother at their mother's request. She tearfully relayed her memories of herself and her three sisters, all injecting their mother with some deadly drug they had procured from a compassionate doctor. They all injected equal amounts, so not one of them was alone in this terrible task of seeing their mother off."

"It was the most I ever saw her cry, and I know that even decades later, her pain was still fresh and immense. Upon sharing this with my mother, she informed me that my great-grandmother had been an activist for euthanasia and passionately wrote and fought for the right for people to make their own end-of-life choices. I can only hope that I could be brave enough to do what is right by my loved ones, and they, for me, whatever road our choices lead us down. Almost two decades later, I miss my grammy and wish I could hold her again. She was brave and empathetic, and the world was better when she was in it. A feeling I'm sure my grammy could relate to."

—Anonymous

13. "One time, my sister and I were at my grandma's house, looking at their wedding photo framed in her bedroom. My grandma came in and noticed us looking at it. She said she wanted to show us something. She proceeded to take the picture out of the frame. Written on the back, in her beautiful cursive handwriting, was 'Doomsday, 1940.' My grandma proceeded to tell us the story of why they got married. She grew up always wanting to be a nun, but she was the oldest girl in her family, and her father ran his own manufacturing business. Her younger sister had a boyfriend who worked for the business, and their father planned to retire at some point to have this young man take over. But back then, younger sisters didn't get married first."

14. "For a more light-hearted one, my grandmother casually dropped during a holiday weekend that she used to make uh... X-rated... novelty candy in the '70s as a side hustle to make ends meet when her kids were school-age. She tag-teamed with a friend, and they were apparently quite successful. I'm not sure if my grandfather ever knew; she didn't mention it. It was, of course, apropos of nothing we were talking about, and I really didn't need to know that."

— lobster_lemon_lime

15. "It's a fun story I unfortunately didn't hear from my grandma herself, but only in an offhand comment from my dad after her death. My grandma was an eastern German refugee living in a giant refugee shelter in western Germany in the early 1950s with my infant father and my grandpa. She became friends with the local apothecary's wife. To make a living, she stock-bought condoms and female hygiene products from her friend and resold them amongst the other refugee women living in the shelter who were too embarrassed to buy them in a shop. She became hugely popular within the local community, and her under-the-table business helped get her start in the new environment."

16. "I got summoned for jury duty. I complained about it to my grandmother, who happened to be sitting there when I opened the mail, and she said she was once summoned but wasn't chosen. I asked her why she wasn't chosen, hoping to learn a sneaky tip to get out of it, and she said, 'Well, it was a murder trial, and during the selection process, they asked me if I knew anyone who had ever been murdered. I replied yes, my mother, and they let me off.' I was STUNNED."

"I knew her mother had died when my grandmother was young, but I assumed it was sickness or something like that. Apparently, my great-grandmother was murdered in a robbery gone wrong. Her killers were caught and brought to justice, but I don't know if I will ever recover from the way I discovered that information."

—Anonymous

17. "My great-grandfather was a railroad man. He traveled the East Coast for work and was based in Pennsylvania. He was married to my great-grandmother for 60+ years, stuck with her through mental illness and becoming a recluse. Their marriage might not have been typical, but it was always clear they loved each other very much. He even commissioned an oil portrait of her that my grandmother still has. However, about 10 years ago, when DNA ancestry started cropping up, my mom's cousin got a hit to a family in another state she'd never heard of. After some digging, she discovered this was my great-grandfather's OTHER FAMILY!"

18. "My grandmother was a go-go dancer and danced in a bar cage during the '70s. She also used to win all the local dance competitions as a kid. Go Nana!"

And lastly:

19. "While many kids had grandparents involved in the war, grandfathers going overseas, grandmothers working in factories... my grandparents lived in a country that the Japanese invaded. The stories were vast and amazing. From doing recon on Japanese Ships, running a clandestine radio station where they had to break down the radio and run with all the parts in hand, to saving an American sailor after his submarine went under with him still topside, to sitting on a 'log' to rest after some fighting only to find it was a giant snake that my grandfather then killed and ate (then using the snake oil to oil his rifle), to my grandma giving birth to my mom during an air raid, the list goes on. But I think the story that takes all of them is that my grandfather witnessed his own funeral."

Has a grandparent, parent, or family member ever dropped a wild bombshell about their life on you that you never knew before? Let me know in the comments or at this anonymous form.