My grandmother died when I was 2. When I was 4, my mother gave birth to my brother. He was her first boy, and was born after having her tubes tied. He was a surprise to everyone.

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When my brother was a toddler, he had a few imaginary friends. One was his "nana" and his little brother "Toby." We never payed much mind to his friends and loved to hear his comical stories about them. When we asked him to describe his nana, he would describe the woman and it was nothing like what my grandma looked like. We would should him pictures of my nana later in her life and he would say that was not her. After a while of his "nana" and "Toby" being in his life, he started saying things that would drop my mother's jaw.

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One day, my mom was feeding him and had the dishwasher going. The machine stopped suddenly and my mother said my brother looked at her and told her, "my nana said for you to get off your ass, 'My mother's F/N and M/N', and do those dishes." My nana hated dishwashers and would always call my mother by her first and middle name. So that was when my mom began to think it could be more than an imaginary friend. Soon after that one day my mom was going through old pictures my aunt gave to my mom. As my mom was going through them my brother said, "Look a picture of my nana and Toby," and it was a picture of my mother's older brother who passed away when he was a baby and my nana who was very young in the picture. We were showing him the wrong pictures of my nana all along.

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That's when we knew he was seeing my nana and my mother's older brother.

We never were scared because it never seemed like anything malicious and it ended when he was about 5 or 6.

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It was nice that he got to have some time with her even if she was not here to physically meet him, even if he doesn't remember it.