Amy Lee reflected on the loss of two of her siblings in a recent appearance on the Hardcore Humanism podcast.
The Evanescence singer lost her sister Bonnie at age three from an undisclosed illness and her brother Robbie, who struggled with severe epilepsy for most of his life, in 2018.
She told podcast host Michael Friedman Ph.D., “To me, going through that, surviving that, being able to continue on and find a way to make your life make sense afterward, that's really what I'm talking about. It's not that I like spooky things and darkness because it's fun to play with danger. It's that the time that I feel the most afraid or alone or whatever in my life is when it's like it didn't happen. It's like the world just went on living like nothing ever went wrong.”
Lee continued, “I remember sometimes feeling really weird on beautiful, sunny days when I was a kid, because I felt like it should always be raining when I was grieving my sister. It's kind of the same thing. To be able to talk about it, to be able to admit it, to be able to face it and say, 'Okay, it hurts this much, and I'm thinking about this stuff.' To be able to spill my guts is the thing that makes it better, and especially to be able to share it with other people. That's why music started for me in the first place.”
She also revealed that one of the hardest things to deal with in the aftermath of loss, is the fear that you’ll start to forget things, saying, “I don't wanna move past the loss of my sister and brother. I will always be their sister. So on a level, I feel like the thing about it is it's not that I'm ever gonna get over it. It's not that I ever want to completely get over it, because I'm never gonna let them go. They're always gonna be with me — really, literally — and part of that is the feeling of pain of losing them because I still love them so much. But the other part of it is laughing at memories and remembering the fun that we have too. I don't wanna just remember the people that I lost by their death. I wanna remember their life. I wanna remember our time.”