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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/LucyAriaRose on 2025-02-21 05:00:09+00:00.

I am NOT the Original Poster. That is Any_Reality580. He posted in r/AITAH

Thanks to u/BakingGiraffeBakes for the rec.

Do NOT comment on Original Posts. Latest update is 7 days old.

Trigger Warning: suicide; self-harm

Mood Spoiler: things are getting better

Original Post: January 27, 2025

My (28M) brother (33M) will be getting married in the fall. The two of us are fairly close, more so in the past few years, which is to say that he is not ignorant about past events in my life.

Recently, I got invited to dinner by him and his fiancée. The two were very obviously buttering me up to ask me something the whole time before my brother finally told me:

“So, [fiancée] and I have been talking, and we’d really love it if you sang our first dance song, just the one song. I know you don’t really sing anymore, but I dug up some old videos of you singing and she loves your voice just as much as I do. This could be your wedding present to us!”

For background: I used to sing all the time. I formed a band with a bunch of my friends in high school, and we were very minorly successful. We had a YouTube channel with a few hundred subscribers, and there were a handful of people that had their own recordings that were posted to their own pages.

In this band was my best friend since second grade, Mason (not real name). Unfortunately, when we were 17, Mason took his own life. Additionally, I was the one who found him.

The band dissolved almost immediately, and our YouTube channel and all our own videos were taken down. Since then, I have NEVER sang. Singing without Mason felt wrong, so I didn’t. Not in the shower, no karaoke sessions, not at church, never.

My brother knew all of this, but I wasn’t sure if his fiancée did, so I started off with “Sorry, I’ll have to refuse. You know I don’t sing anymore” in the interest of not totally ruining dinner.

My brother was annoyed as hell at this. “Come on, it’s for my wedding, it’s just one song, I’m not asking for much here” and so forth.

I continued to politely refuse and left soon after. Shortly after, I start receiving countless calls from my mom, who also knows the reason why and decided to harass me about not singing. “It’s your brother’s wedding! I think you really should see a therapist about this, we all love your singing voice and it’s been 10 years since any of us got to hear it!”

The two have since decided on a new tactic by saying that my song will be a good way to honor Mason’s memory.

The point about therapy aside (I’ve been to lots of it. I’m at peace with my decision to stop singing) AITA for refusing? It’s clearly important to them.

EDIT: To clarify, I have really only ever performed with Mason. The joy I got from performing was not the act of singing itself, but from performing with my best friend.

OOP’s Comments:

Ok y’all, this is… overwhelming. Let me throw a few things in one.

1. I don’t know if my future SIL is aware of the full situation or not. I’d like to think she doesn’t, but I’d rather not poke that hornet’s nest until I have to.
2. Yes, I HAVE been to therapy. Singing is something I did with Mason, well before we started a full band. It very much feels like a part of my life that belongs in the past. As I said in the edit, my joy is not from singing, it’s from performing with him.
3. “Is that what Mason would have wanted?” I don’t know. He’s not around to ask anymore.
4. The “extended family” is not “blowing up my phone.” It’s two people, and it’s not blowing it up. My mom called repeatedly in one day, and has tried to throw it in a few times since. My brother is mostly giving me the cold shoulder. It’s only been a few weeks since this conversation took place.
5. To whomever said “its been 10 years, you’re not good enough to sing at a wedding,” thank you. I genuinely laughed at this. It’s a good point too. I’d probably sound like a donkey kicked me in the throat.
6. No, I don’t post a lot. This is a throwaway I barely use.

Number 5:

Commenter: No disrespect but if you haven’t sung in 10 years …your voice might not be good enough NTA

OOP: Found it! Thank you, this one made me laugh. 😃

Update Post: February 14, 2025 (18 days later)

Ok, idk if I have to do anything special to update people that commented Updateme on the last post, but here we are.

This is premature, but since the post I made was more popular than I expected (or wanted), I thought I’d give a small update.

Future SIL reached out to me because her washer broke and she wanted to come over and do a quick load of laundry. I wasn’t thrilled about this, but I live close enough, I have in-unit, and the laundromats in our area are not the safest.

I was content to just watch TV silently in my tiny apartment while we waited, but she of course had something to discuss. I thought for sure she’d be the third person to try to convince me, but no.

Instead she told me that she wasn’t sure if my brother was giving her the full story. She told me that “he used to sing all the time, he was in a band, but he quit when the band broke up.” (Which is technically true, but come on).

I also learned that he had told many of his friends this too, about how he’s always trying to convince me to come around and sing for all of them. He had literally never asked before THE conversation, but was prone to making comments like “boy it sure sucks you don’t sing anymore, I know a lot of people that would want to hear that.”

So, I very briefly told her about Mason. Just the important bits. That I used to sing with him, then he died, so I don’t have any desire to do so anymore.

She didn’t say anything for awhile, but I saw her face go through about a dozen different emotions, and I’m pretty sure she settled on anger.

Before she left, she just told me that she’s going to tell my brother to get someone else to sing. I got the distinct feeling that it’s not going to be a pleasant conversation.

So, that’s it so far. All quiet. Fingers crossed.

Some of OOP’s Comments:

Commenter (downvoted): SIL is awesome.

As an internet stranger I strongly recommend therapy.

And… Do you think Mason would want you to quit singing entirely? I highly doubt that.

OOP: I guess I could try breaking out the Ouija Board to ask him, but I’ve never had much luck.

You need therapy and therapy is nothing to be ashamed of:

I agree: therapy is nothing to be ashamed of. Which is why I went out and got a lot of it, as I mentioned in the original post.

I do appreciate that you are likely coming to this with the best of intentions. But Mason is gone and no longer has an opinion on how I choose to live my life.

OOP adds in comments:

Hi ya’ll: again the response on this have been much here larger than anticipated. I just need to get something off my chest and hopefully I don’t come across as overly aggressive.

Regarding the obnoxious comments saying “Is that Mason would want???”

I don’t know, he’s not around to ask anymore. The dead tend to not have opinions.

I’ve had over a decade to process this. Via THERAPY (putting it in all caps this time). But I truly hope the people who comment this don’t ever try this approach on someone who just experienced a loss. Regardless of intentions, it is grossly manipulative.

And again, for the people in the back: I didn’t stop singing because I thought that’s what Mason would want or survivor’s guilt or because I was actually secretly in love with him (yes, real DM I received). I stopped because I loved singing with my musical partner, who is now gone. I no longer find the act enjoyable.

Editor’s note: There is a really sweet exchange between a commenter and OOP that ends up with an apple pie recipe here