Anderson Cooper Posts Heartbreaking Photo On The 29th Anniversary Of His Brother's Death

Journalist Anderson Cooper gave viewers a rare look into his personal life over the weekend when he posted a heart-wrenching photo in honor of his older brother, Carter, who took his own life 29 years ago.

Carter was only 23 when he died in 1988, according to People.

"Hard to believe it has been 29 years," Cooper captioned the Instagram post of he and his brother as children. "He remains in my heart, golden and true."

The message was especially poignant following the suicide of Linkin Park's frontman Chester Bennington earlier this month, just months after Soundgarden's Chris Cornell was discovered dead in his hotel. The death was later ruled a suicide.

Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, spoke with Jess Cagle, editorial director of People and Entertainment Weekly, about the pain of the loss, even after all these years, back in March 2016.

"The most terrible word in the English language, 'closure,'" Vanderbilt said of her son's death.

Though they haven't completely gotten "closure," Vanderbilt and Cooper said that they found strength in each other after Carter's suicide.

"I think it obviously brought us together in ways, and I think you can't help but come closer going through something like that, and you know, it left us with each other," Cooper said. "I think it's still hard to believe it's been so long because I think it's still so present in our lives, that sense of loss."

Cooper, who anchors Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, went on to say that though he misses his brother, he struggles to picture a world in which Carter experienced adulthood with him.

"I think it's hard for me to imagine," he told Cagle. "It's stunning for me to think of how long ago it was that he died, that I've lived more of my life without him than I lived with him. That's incomprehensible to me. He's forever frozen in time. When we were growing up, I used to imagine us being adults and being closer when we were adults and having families and getting to know each other in a new way, and we never had that opportunity."