Cindy Crawford and family mourn son Presley Gerber

Cindy Crawford, Rande Gerber and their daughter Kaia have paid their first public tributes to Presley Gerber, who died at 27 last month. In a statement shared Sunday, the family said they were “beyond heartbroken” and remembered him as “a sweet, beautiful soul who loved and is loved, now and forever.”

Presley died Sept. 20 at a rehabilitation facility in Santa Monica, California. Police have said they are investigating his death as a suspected overdose. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner has not determined a cause of death; its case remains pending additional investigation. The BBC reported that police said there was no indication of foul play.

“We feel so blessed to have had Presley in our lives for 27 years,” the family’s statement said. “We are so proud of how he showed up in the world, with kindness and vulnerability.”

Crawford, a supermodel, and her husband, businessman Rande Gerber, shared the message on their Instagram accounts. They thanked those who had reached out, including “strangers who feel our pain.” It ended: “Til we meet again our sweet boy. We love you forever, Mom, Dad and Kaia.”

Kaia, Presley’s younger sister, posted a separate tribute with images and a video of the siblings as children. According to the BBC, her post included a four-page letter addressed to “prez,” a childhood video of the two dancing and a photo of them near the ocean.

“I love you the bluest, to the moon and back and back again, forever big brother,” she wrote in the caption. In her letter, she recalled being afraid to have her ears pierced and said Presley went first. “But when I held the earring they took from your body, all I could think was: That belongs to you,” she wrote.

Kaia also described the difficulty of living without him. “To say loving you was the easiest thing in the world would imply that it required any effort at all. I was born loving you. I will die loving you. There was never anything else,” she wrote. “I am learning how to love you when I cannot see you. How to tell you something without picking up my phone to call you. How to be your sister in a world that I can’t reach for you in.”

Like his mother and sister, Presley worked as a model. The BBC reported that he made his catwalk debut for the Italian label Moschino at 16. In recent years, he spoke openly about mental health challenges and drug use, and posted Instagram videos he called “Mental Health Mondays.”