My name is Anthony, I am 41 years old living a pretty normal life with a wife and two grown up children, 18 and 19. Let me tell you about my experience with my dad and grandfather as a young man.
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My memories of my early life in what most would consider to be a poor neighbourhood are fond memories. Idyllic isn't a word normally associated with the part of town I grew up in but thinking back it had everything I needed. All my best friends lived on my street, my school was within close walking distance, as were the shops, there were two huge parks close by and there was even a library: it was a great little eco system. perhaps I have my rose tinted glasses on but my childhood through to my late teens was perfect to me.
January 1998 came and I turned 18, this was when things began to change. Even though I was still living at home with my mum and dad, my carefree days felt like they were well and truly over, suddenly there was an expectation to "grow up," get a job and do all of that.
Out of the blue my grandmother had a serious stroke and soon after passed away, leaving my 70 year old grandfather widowed and alone. As he wasn't able to fully look after himself properly, my parents decided that we should move house closer to him to more conveniently be there to help him with certain things like cook his meals and do his laundry, keep him company and take him out from time to time. My grandfather was a cantankerous old so-and-so who was horrible to my grandmother towards the end of her life: I think he took out his frustrations on her, so I wasn't particularly thrilled to be moving near him.
We moved into a flat very close by his on the same street. It wasn't that far away from where we were living before, but this was before the days of internet and social media, and so gradually I lost regular contact with the friends I'd grown up with.
For the most part my grandfather was content in his own company in his flat but everyday my dad would cook his meals at our house and it fell to me to take them around to him. Rather than take them from me at his door, he would have me walk it right in through his house to the kitchen and place it down for him. This became a monotonous daily routine that after a while I started to resent.
Estranged from my friends, not yet working and lumbered with this daily chore, I became quite an isolated individual, what you might call an "Incel" these days, just in my room listening to music, playing video games, and cultivating taboo sexual fantasies in my head involving crossdressing and gay sex with people that I really shouldn't be thinking about sex with. It wasn't healthy but this is what isolation did to me.
On one particular day when I arrived at my grandfather's house with his meal, he was unusually smiley and friendly when he opened the door to me, normally he's quite curmudgeonly, which was part of his charm I suppose but he seemed very pleasant on this occasion.
As I entered he placed his hand on my upper back, slowly rubbing it as I passed him, and in the kitchen as I was putting the plates down on the table he was stood right up next to me engaging me in conversation with his hand on the small of my back. I sensed that he wanted me to stay, but I just headed to the door to leave. As usual he lead me out. At the door, before opening it, he gestured for me to give him a kiss on the cheek, which I just automatically did, then looking me up and down he opened the door and I left. On the walk home I was wondering what the hell all that was about!
Back at home my dad was looking at me inquisitively. "did he say anything to you?" he asked. "No." I responded, and acted as if it was just a typical uneventful dinner drop-off.
Something didn't feel right here, for my grandfather to act like he did, and then for my dad to ask me that, I felt something strange was going on.
Later, I was in my room on the bed with headphones on listening to music when in came my dad. "Go back round to your grandads will you?" he said to me. "What for?" I asked. "He wants you to do something for him." "Just do what he asks you." He added as I was getting on my shoes. This sounded very ominous.
When I got there he said that he wanted me to move a wardrobe closer to the wall: he'd just recently had a new carpet fitted and the wardrobe wasn't quite back in it's original place. With my skinny arms I grappled it and began to manoeuvre it backwards as he watched. It wasn't particularly heavy but it was flimsy and liable to break. I opened the wardrobe and saw that it was full of clothes on hangers and shoes in the bottom. They were my late grandmothers clothes that he was keeping hold of. "We should take these out, shouldn't we?" he suggested. So we both began emptying the wardrobe and placing them carefully on the bed.
As we were emptying the wardrobe of the clothes I was grabbing two or three at a time while he was taking them out one by one. It had been about six month's since my grandmother died and he must have been missing her very much. He was telling me anecdotes and his fond memories that are attached to many of these items of clothing: she wore this to a wedding we went to...she wore that to a job interview, and so on.