unsettlingstories:

My uncle worked for the State Department. He died a couple weeks ago. As per State Department policy, whenever one of their higher-ranking employees dies, the Department sends a small team to the home of the deceased to ensure they had no sensitive documents in their possession. It’s not that they distrust their dead colleague – they just don’t trust his family.

The Department team came to my uncle’s house one morning, spent a few hours rifling through his closets and drawers, and left with a small pile of papers. They expressed their condolences for my loss, then left. I never saw them again. Not even at the funeral.

On the night I visited and found him on the floor, dying of a heart attack, he told me something. It’s something I would’ve preferred to have never heard; something that made me wish I’d gotten to his house 20 minutes later to find him dead.

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