Liam Payne’s sister says she’s ‘struggling’ and feels ‘homesick’ for her life before grief as she reflects on 18 months since his tragic death
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Ruth Gibbins, Liam Payne’s sister, said she was “struggling” and feeling “homesick” for her life before the pain as she commemorated the 18th month of his death.
The One Direction singer fell from the third-floor balcony of the luxury CasaSur hotel in Palermo on October 16, 2024, at the age of 31.
The medical cause of death was declared to be ‘polytrauma’, a term meaning there was more than one traumatic injury to the person’s body.
Ruth shared a heartfelt post on Instagram in memory of Liam on Thursday, saying she now feels like a different person after his passing.
He shared an old photo they took together and wrote: ’18 months without you seems impossible to form a sentence, but still we are here.
‘Healing is a very difficult thing to navigate. I can’t go back to the person I was before because grief has changed my perspective that I can never be that person again. But then I feel sad that she will never know the person who showed up after Liam’s death.
Liam Payne’s sister Ruth Gibbins says she is “struggling” and “homesick” for her life before the pain as she marks 18 months since his death
The One Direction singer fell from the third-floor balcony of the luxury CasaSur hotel in Palermo on October 16, 2024, at the age of 31.
‘And the real part of me longs so much to go back to my previous life that if I were given the choice between that life or solving all the problems in the world forever, I would always choose to go back to my life where my brother existed.
‘Liam taught me a lot in life but he didn’t teach me how to live without him and that’s a lesson I’m really trying to overcome.
‘Liam, I know you’ve been around me, especially in the last few weeks. I miss you more than I can handle, you should be here with us. I know you want us to live, I hope you can see everything we do in your soul.’
She also shared a link to a post about dealing with grief: ‘When it hurts, I silently tell myself we’ll talk tomorrow.
‘I know tomorrow will never come but today gets me through and I have these days to last a lifetime.’
In November, Ruth shared a devastating tribute to Liam on the anniversary of his funeral. His funeral was held on 20 November 2024 at Saint Mary’s Church in Amersham, Buckinghamshire.
Sharing a photo of herself and Liam during their X Factor days, Ruth wrote: ‘A year ago today, the hardest farewell I will ever have, a funeral I should never have had to plan and every day since, I should never have had to live without him.
Ruth shared a heartfelt post on Instagram in memory of Liam on Thursday, saying she now feels like a different person after his passing.
‘Missing him is now a part of breathing. It doesn’t get easier, it’s just a lie to make you feel better. ‘Eternal love, eternal loss.’
As she marked the one-year anniversary of his death in October, Liam’s older sister Nicola published a heartbreaking post describing his loss as ‘a pain that will never heal’.
She shared several candid photos in the tribute and spoke movingly about how the family is keeping the memory of her eight-year-old son Bear alive so he can ‘know all about his wonderful father’.
In his touching message, he also revealed that he was trying to make his nephew Ffion remember his uncle by comparing him to ‘a star in the sky’ and ‘a rainbow, a butterfly, a cloud’.
