Liam Payne’s sister has shared a moving tribute to the late One Direction star, saying she still struggles with the silence left by his absence.
Ruth Gibbins, one of the singer’s older sisters, took to Instagram on Monday to post a black and white photo of her brother smoking on a plane.
Alongside the image, she wrote: “You should be here, enjoying life, calling me with your random stories about your days, laughing at our kids’ poses for start of school and marvelling at how big they are now, playing darts with your friends, sharing and getting excited for your new music. You should be here Liam.
“The silence that your absence has in my life is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. I feel sorry for anyone who understands this feeling.”
Payne, who found global fame as part of One Direction, died in October 2024 after falling from the balcony of his hotel while on holiday in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was 31.
At the end of August, the family marked what would have been his 32nd birthday with a series of activities he had loved.
Ruth shared photographs from their lives together, including a post from his last birthday where she had written she didn’t “know what I’d do without you”.
Reflecting on those words, she told her followers: “There’s no difference in what I wrote then to now, from the bottom of my broken heart, I don’t know what I’m doing without you.”
Her younger sister Nicola also shared that the family went bowling, as they had the previous year, but said “one huge part of our family is missing”. Payne’s girlfriend at the time of his death, Kate Cassidy, posted a video of herself baking a cake in his memory, writing: “Happy birthday Liam. I know you still have the sweetest tooth in heaven.”
Ruth’s latest post also recalled how the singer had been left irritated by backlash to the photo of him smoking on the plane. “I remember thinking at the time this photo was so cool… even though the backlash you got for smoking on a plane p***** you off.”
