Liam Payne’s older sister is continuing to mourn the loss of her brother, six months after his unexpected death at age 31.
Ruth Gibbins posted a heartfelt letter to Payne via Instagram where she reflected on the last few months and how she’s tried to move forward.
“My head is still screaming for you,” wrote Gibbins, 34, on Wednesday, April 16. “Each morning on waking, I feel like I am plunged underwater, gasping for air that never comes to relieve me. Living without you is impossible, so for now, I exist. I’m learning to laugh or smile in the right places, but mate, it’s exhausting when all I want to do is speak to you.”
She continued, “In the few moments I allow myself to feel love and not just loss. I can really smile at the memories of us, like last year when we were doubled over laughing at us trying to make something we’d seen on youtube, but memories are always tinged with sadness at how unfair it is we can’t make new ones.”
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Gibbins still took time to remember those moments, noting she sees Payne wherever she goes.
“I can sometimes hear you laughing at me walking around like Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost, looking for you everywhere I go,” she wrote. “I see you, though, you’re always coming through in different ways to put me back on the right path. I can’t process what’s happened and the finality of it, you know I will never stop doing all I can for you. I miss you loudly, quietly and in all the moments in between.”
“Love you so much more than these words or my tears are capable of expressing but I know you know this,” she concluded. “For now, I’ll meet you in my dreams.”
Payne died on October 16 after falling from his hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was later revealed that the former One Direction singer had a blood-alcohol concentration “of up to 2.7 grams per liter in [his] blood at the time of death,” according to a February 2025 press release from Argentina’s National Crime and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office No. 14. He also had “cocaine metabolites, methylecgonine, benzoylecgomine, cocaethylene and the medication sertraline,” an antidepressant, in his system when he died.
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A preliminary autopsy viewed by Us Weekly in October revealed he died from “multiple injuries involving ‘internal and external hemorrhage.”
Three days after his death, Gibbins shared another heartbreaking note via Instagram.
“I don’t believe this is happening,” she wrote at the time. “Many times have I poured my heart out publicly with pride about Liam but never much about life as his sister. Liam is my best friend, no one could ever make me laugh as much as him, doing his impressions always had me creasing and he loved seeing how much of a laugh he could get.”
