I’m 32M, and I live in a small town where I help manage the bookstore my grandfather built from scratch after immigrating here decades ago. He raised me like a son after our parents died in a car crash when I was 12. My younger brother (now 21) was only a baby back then. I basically became his third parent, helped with his homework, made sure he had clothes, even taught him how to drive.

Our grandfather was our rock. He was gentle, funny, and kind, the type of man who’d give away his lunch to a homeless person and tell no one about it. But about three years ago, things started changing. He began forgetting names, repeating things, and getting easily confused. Eventually, he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

It was devastating. Watching the man who raised me slowly lose pieces of himself was unbearable but I promised I’d take care of him the way he took care of us.

My brother? He couldn’t have run faster. He refused to visit, even when I asked for help. He told people my grandfather was “gross” and “not all there anymore.” Once, I overheard him tell a friend that our grandfather “was like a broken robot drooling in the living room.” That image haunted me more than I can describe.

I tried to excuse it. He was only 18. Maybe scared. Maybe didn’t know how to deal with it. But it kept happening. He wouldn’t sit at the table with him. He mocked the way he talked when he forgot words. He once refused to bring him a glass of water because “it smelled like old people in here.” I was working 10-hour shifts, managing medications, trying to keep my grandfather safe and calm during his sundowning episodes… and my brother was in his room playing video games and pretending we didn’t exist.

When my grandfather passed last year, my brother didn’t even come to the funeral. He texted me saying he had a “midterm” and couldn’t miss it. I later found out he was at a beach party that weekend.

Now, suddenly, he wants to come “visit for a few weeks” this summer. He says he misses the bookstore and “wants to reconnect.” My partner says I should try, that people change and maybe he regrets what happened. But all I can feel is anger. My heart twists when I think about letting him sleep in the room where our grandfather used to read to us. I don’t know how to look him in the eye and not see the kid who laughed when the man who raised us couldn’t remember his own name.

So… AITAH for not wanting to let him stay? For not being able to just move on?