Anderson Cooper is remembering his brother, Carter, on the 35th anniversary of his death.
The 56-year-old CNN anchor took to Instagram to share a set of photos of Carter, then a child, starting the slideshow with a black-and-white photo of the pair. Anderson also included two solo shots of his older brother — one of him as a kid and a photo of Carter as a teen.
“It is 35 years today since my brother, Carter Cooper, died. I think of him, and miss him, every day,” Anderson captioned the post.
Anderson’s post was met with lots of love in the comments, including from his CNN colleagues, with commentator Ana Navarro-Cárdenas writing, “These days are so very hard. The pain dulls but the absence never goes away.”
Family friend and fashion designer, Diane von Furstenberg also commented on the post, adding, “He protects you Anderson ❤️🙏.”
Carter, who was just two years older than the famed journalist, died over three decades ago at the age of 23, after jumping off the terrace wall of his mother Gloria Vanderbilt’s 14th-floor Manhattan apartment, a decade after the death of his father, Wyatt Emory Cooper.
While taking a tour of his late mother’s New York City apartment during a September 2022 episode of his CNN podcast, “All There Is With Anderson Cooper”, Anderson reflected on how the passing of his father in 1978 and the suicide of his brother, 10 years later, profoundly impacted him.
“Both of their deaths really changed me forever,” Anderson explained about losing his family. “I feel like a shadow of the person I was or was meant to be. After the shock of my dad’s death, I withdrew deep into myself. And 10 years later, when my brother died, I went deeper still.”
He added while walking through his mother’s home, “This place has a lot of memories for me. A lot of memories of people who are no longer here. Just coming here, frankly, is hard.”
Despite all the time that has passed, Anderson who also lost his mother in June 2019 at 95, said he still finds it hard to talk about the deaths of his father and brother.
“I find it hard to talk about my dad and my brother,” he noted. “It’s been 34 years since Carter’s suicide and the violence of it, the horror of it, it stuns me still.”
Anderson who shares sons Sebastian, 17 months, and Wyatt, 3, along with co-parent Benjamin Maisani, is seeing the brotherly bond he shared with his late brother play out in his two sons, who share a similar two-year age gap. Though the similarities are there, Anderson said he’s employed a different tactic to make sure the two have a close Relationship while also maintaining their individual identities.
“I was really worried about this. When I was growing up, when I came, my brother was like two years and four months older and every childhood photo I have is I’m very happy as a little baby and my brother’s chewing the inside of his lip,” Cooper quipped during an appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”.
“With Wyatt, I’ve gone a different tact. I’m doing a slow roll with Sebastian. I didn’t want Wyatt’s life to suddenly cataclysmically change… Wyatt’s not on top of him every day,” he added. “We go out a lot and stuff.”
MORE FROM ET:
Andy Cohen Jokes He Could Have ‘Some Good Threesomes’ With Anderson
Anderson Cooper on Son Wyatt’s Daily Tradition With Brother Sebastian
Anderson Cooper Shares New Pics of Son