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Sahara Ray’s younger sister has paid tribute to her late sibling following her suspected fentanyl overdose death – describing the Australian model as a “force of nature.”
Ruby Ray shared a carousel of throwback snaps on Instagram Tuesday – just two days after swimwear entrepreneur Sahara, 34, died in a Los Angeles hospital.
“My beautiful big sister, Sahara,” Ruby Ray wrote. “The most vivacious, intelligent, hilarious, kind, empathetic and breathtakingly beautiful soul. A force of nature. A light so bright that this world feels impossibly dimmer without her in it.
“Sahara has moved from this life into another, and I am left trying to comprehend how someone so full of life can no longer be here to live it.
“From the moment I entered this world, I looked up to her. In my eyes, she was everything extraordinary about being human. She was magic, she was warmth, she was laughter, she was love. She was, to me, the most incredible person to ever walk this earth.”
Ruby Ray told how grief is the “most excruciating, all-consuming pain” that reaches “places you never knew existed.”
“How cruel it is to love someone so deeply and have nowhere for that love to go,” she wrote.
“To have a lifetime of memories behind you, but no more tomorrows together.
“I don’t think there are words in any language capable of holding the weight of this heartbreak. I don’t know how to make sense of a world that keeps turning when mine feels as though it has stopped.
“God, grief hurts. It is the most excruciating, all-consuming pain I have ever been doused in. A pain that reaches into the deepest parts of your soul, into places you never knew existed, and leaves an emptiness that no words could ever begin to describe.
“And beneath all this grief, all this disbelief, all this unbearable heartache, is the simplest, most devastating truth.”
Ruby Ray then longed how she wanted more time with her sibling, who was linked romantically to Justin Bieber in 2016.
“I just want my big sister,” she wrote. “I want more time. More laughter. More conversations. More of her. If love alone could have kept you here, Sahara, you would have lived a thousand lifetimes. I will spend the rest of mine loving you.”
Ruby Ray’s carousel of images featured snaps of the pair throughout the years – including from when they were kids.
Sahara Ray, the founder of her swimwear brand Sahara Ray Swim, died nine months after she welcomed her daughter, Snow Ray Dow.
An official cause of death hasn’t been released – but the Daily Mail reported she died from a fentanyl overdose.
Ray’s family told TMZ she was “so loved” at the time of her passing.
Ray, the daughter of legendary surfer Tony Ray, had been out of the public eye in recent years.
Her last public appearance was when she attended the Ashton Michael RTW + 10-Year Anniversary Show: “Punk Tsugi” in Los Angeles in November 2023. Per photos, she was seated between then-boyfriend Mod Sun and SIIICKBRAIN at the fashion show.
Just a few months later in April 2024, Ray revealed her battle with the autoimmune disease Guillain-Barré syndrome, which left her partially paralyzed and briefly wheelchair-bound, after being hit by a car.
According to Mayo Clinic, Guillain-Barré syndrome “is a condition in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves,” with symptoms that “cause weakness, numbness or paralysis.” It can be activated by acute trauma such as a car crash.
“Right now I’m paralyzed from the tops of my upper thighs all the way down to my feet. I can’t walk at all,” she said in a TikTok video shortly after the car crash, per 7news.com.