Found money

My father's mother--my grandmother Vivian--died suddenly when I was 12 years old. She had entered the hospital for hip replacement surgery, which went very well. But on a Friday morning, several days after the surgery, she shared that she was having difficulty breathing. Shortly after she lay down, she fell into eternal slumber. A blood clot moved into her lungs.

Naturally, this was tragic for my family, leaving us all floundering for a while. As a wife, mother and grandmother, she ferociously worked to maintain a solid and stable family. This makes sense; her own parents divorced when she was a girl, she moved with her mother (my great-grandmother Leta) several times through nearly a handful of step-fathers and then lived with her father from high school to marriage.

As many women of the time, she was the master of her house, particularly the interior. My grandfather, of course, was the master of the lawn and garage. They shared the responsibility of the flower and vegetable beds.

When my grandfather and aunt (only 22 at the time) went through my grandmother’s personal things and the rooms and storage areas of her domain, they uncovered several tins and containers of money—change and bills—that she had hidden in various places around the house.

Prior to this, we knew that she had a couple of places where she kept jars of primarily pennies – her bureau, the dining room hutch and the linen closet, specifically, but this stash of cash all around the house was a surprise discovery. They found money jars (and plastic baggies) in the pantry cupboard of the “fruit room” (an unheated room in the basement for food and other storage), laundry cupboard, flour canister, spice cabinet, hall closet, guest bedroom closet, her closet (in a shoe box), her craft closet and an upstairs storage closet. (My grandparents’ home had a single second-floor bedroom that was used by my father and uncle when they lived at home.)

Nothing in her relationship with my grandfather indicated that there was any distrust in their relationship, giving her cause to have her own money, just in case. He may not have been the easiest man to live with, but he believed in their marriage.

However, Vivian was a child of the Depression, which may account for her hidden savings, at least partly. Perhaps she adhered to an understanding that it is always good to have some cash at home, just in case. (My grandparents were financially secure, and both were extraordinary money managers.) She may also have learned to hide her money when she lived with her father. While I am not positive of his financial state, I do know that his second wife was an alcoholic, and it is quite possible that the step-mother appropriated “found” money for her addiction, since that is common for such persons. Or it could be that having grown up in several unstable homes with her mother (four husbands from age eight to 15), Vivian learned that she needed to keep an emergency stash. Whatever the reason, she did it.

There wasn’t a lot in each location, but the total was several hundred dollars.