RJ Mitte’s sister, Lacianne Carriere, said his strawberry Fanta was still on her coffee table when she got the call about his death. In an October 23 Instagram tribute, she described losing the brother who’d helped shape her tastes, her habits and her sense of who she was.
“There are just no words. You were just here … your strawberry Fanta was still sitting on my coffee table when I got the call,” she wrote. “Life hasn’t felt real since then.”
Mitte, who played Walter White Jr., Bryan Cranston’s onscreen son on Breaking Bad, died by suicide earlier in October. He was 34 and had lived with cerebral palsy since being diagnosed at 3.
For Carriere, his place in her life extended beyond being her brother. “I just lost my other half. I lost my brother but I also lost my father. Every single aspect of my personality is because of your influence.”
She credited him with introducing her to the music, films and video games she loved, and with teaching her to collect keepsakes, including small pieces of paper that could become precious memories. Since his death, she said, she and his closest people had gathered almost every night to trade stories about him.
“You were the life of the party,” she wrote. “We had so much more to do, so many more memories to be shared and I don’t know if my heart can ever be whole again after losing the biggest piece of it.”
She also remembered the advice he’d give when she was struggling: put on lofi music, get up and sit in the shower because it helped him feel better.
“I know you’re telling me right now that I’ll be okay though I don’t know how I will, but I promise I’m going to do my hardest. I promise your love will always live through me until the day I see you again,” she wrote.
“I loved you completely, and you loved me the same. That’s all. The rest is confetti.”