"I'm affected differently by the news now," says Kate O'Keeffe. "You used to hear the horrors people go through but the next day I'd have forgotten about those stories. Now I know that there's a real family behind that, real people who will continue to hurt a long time after that news story, because that was us."
The Sydney-based teacher knows this only too well. Her 24-year-old brother's disappearance became a major news story in 2011 after her family launched a huge social media campaign, Dan Come Home, in an attempt to find him.
There were a number of reported sightings of her brother, known as Dan, during the next five years, after he was reported missing from Geelong.
The search for Dan had Kate stage a one-woman show at Adelaide Fringe in 2012 to help spread the word, and prompted their sister Loren to form the Missing Persons Advocacy Network in 2013, which she continues to run.
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The family's quest came to an end in March when remains, later identified as Dan's, were found underneath the O'Keeffe family home.
Although the discovery answered some questions for the O'Keeffes, confirmation of Dan's death did not necessarily provide closure.
Kate is staging a new show, Losing You (Twice) in Sydney and Melbourne, a sequel of sorts of her Adelaide Fringe production, as a form of catharsis and advocacy.
"It's really about honouring Dan and moving through my grief, writing it all down and sharing it," she says of the play, which opens in February.
"The first show was more like, 'This has happened, please help us'. Now this is more of 'This is what happened', and I sort of touch on the bigger issues of male suicide in Australia and the awful statistics."
The title reflects the phases of loss the family experienced: when Dan first disappeared and again when his death was confirmed, she says.
"When Dan first went missing people came to the house and dropped off food and flowers and cards ... And then we went for [five] years and he was found, and it was repeated ...
"I talk about the implications of that [losing hope]. I so desperately wanted answers, but we had the hope that he might walk through the door. Then once we finally had the answers I instantly wanted the illusion back that he could walk through the door."
While her show, directed by Paul Gilchrist, is ostensibly about a sad topic, she says there are moments of hope as well as humour, mostly through home videos of her and her siblings as children.
She re-enacts events from their childhood, including an interminable clown performance at Dan's fourth birthday, a daggy liturgical dance and her earliest attempts at filmmaking.
"Some of it is going to be quite hard, but the first part, with all the home video footage, is going to be full of joy."
Losing You (Twice) is at Newtown's King's Street Theatre, Sydney from February 7-17 and Melbourne's Butterfly from February 21-26.
Tickets: kingstreettheatre.com.au; thebutterflyclub.com/. Use the codeword "rememberingdan" to receive a discount.
Missing Persons Advocacy Network
mpan.com.au
Lifeline: 13 11 14
lifeline.org.au
Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467
suicidecallbackservice.org.au
beyondblue: 1300 22 4636
beyondblue.org.au