It follows the family’s first Christmas without the Wodonga Catholic College student and what would have been Ryan’s 17th birthday in June.

Brooke, her father Gus, other family members and Ryan’s closest mates will today gather at his grave for a private memorial ceremony, after a dinner held at the family’s Wodonga home last night.

“First things are hard. My 21st is next year and it will be another of those things that you would have just expected him to be here for,” Ms De Angelis said.

“They just creep up.”

Ms De Angelis and her long-term partner Mitchell Barton announced their engagement after her brother’s death but they are still to decide on a suitable date for their wedding.

“He used to look to Mitch, they were really close, like he was his big brother,” she said.

“Mitch said all along he had been expecting Ryan to be standing alongside him, but there are so many things in the past year and you forget he is not standing alongside us.

“It has been a huge life change for us and a wedding is something you want to do with everyone there.”

After Ryan’s death last November, Ms De Angelis returned from the Mornington Peninsula to the Wodonga home she and her brother had shared with their father and mother, Petra.

The parents had separated about 12 months before Ryan died when he was struck in the head by a bullet from a friend’s rifle while the pair were hunting at Merriang.

Ms De Angelis said she remained in regular contact with her mother, who now lived in Tumbarumba.

“She’s pretty strong, she’s getting there,” she said.

Ms De Angelis said she had spent seven or eight months living with her father before her recent return to the Mornington Peninsula.

“It was only Ryan and I there with dad and it takes a long time to realise, to get your head around the fact that he’s not here, that he’s not just in his bedroom,” she said.

“They say time makes it easier but I don’t think it does.”

Ms De Angelis said she and her father saw her brother’s shooting as a tragic accident rather than dwell on “what if” scenarios.

“You can’t live like that,” she said.

“You still have to live your life but what I didn’t like about that is that afterwards I wanted it all to stop and to stay in bed for six weeks.”

She said she had seen big changes in her father but he now continued to live at the home he had built for his family with ongoing support from neighbours, friends and visits from Ryan’s mates.

“His friends are really good. They go motorbike riding with Dad, they come round for dinner.”