Eva Mendes leaves a bittersweet tribute to the “annoying brother” 8 years after the death

Eva Mendes has shared a bittersweet tribute to her late brother Carlos Mendes nearly eight years after he died of cancer.

She marked the 61st anniversary of Carlos’ birth with a special post on her Instagram account featuring an animated image of Teri Garr.

“My mood today… captured by the coolest, Teri Garr. I’m posting it because it’s my brother’s heavenly birthday today and he LOVED it,” the former actor wrote.

“You can tell a lot from a person by who they hang out with, looking back I didn’t appreciate it, he was my annoying older brother but now I realize he was cooler than I thought. I was the one who didn’t get it,” added Ryan Gosling’s lady.

“I still can’t believe it, it will be 8 years since he died. Unreal,” his younger brother Ghost Rider Actor Carlo Mendez commented on the post.

On Monday, the mum-of-two explained that she has a “complicated relationship” with the month of April.

“Oh April… I have such a complicated relationship with you,” Mendes wrote. “Tomorrow would have been my brother’s birthday…..a few weeks from now is the day we lost him…but then at the end of April we got the biggest blessing of all, my baby girl was born 8 years ago. I hate you April, but I love you more,” Mendes wrote on Instagram.

Talking to me People Magazine in 2019, Eva recalled how the birth of her second daughter coincided with the traumatic incident of her brother’s death.

“It’s so hard,” she said. “Thank God I had my baby. it was a week after he left. So there was something to go on. There was poetry in it all.”

Eva added: “My favorite memories are when he used to, at Thanksgiving or a big dinner party or Christmas dinner, he would roast everybody – but he would roast you hard. Of course, I miss him incredibly, and that’s an understatement, but I’m keeping that tradition going.”

“I’m so glad he gave me that. I don’t think I could have carried it the way he did, but those are some fun memories because it would have been really raw.”