The country star also opened up about adopting his sister’s three children and finding the “silver linings” in life amid grief.
Eighteen and a half years ago, Luke Bryan stepped onto the stage of the Grand Ole Opry for the very first time. In the audience were 80 of his closest family members and friends, thanks to his big sister, Kelly, who had organized the group to watch Luke stand in the historic circle for the first time.
That night proved to be both one of the best and most heartbreaking moments of his life because it was the last time he would ever see his sister. She tragically passed away just a few days later.
For one of the first times ever, the country star is opening up about his sister’s death and how it impacted him during an unfiltered conversation on the CNN podcast All There Is with Anderson Cooper.
“I’ve never really explained what happened to my sister. There’s some misinformation out there on the internet, and I think some people kind of like, wonder what happened and think that we’ve tried to cover it up,” he began.
“But there is a very very small percentage of people that die for no reason in the world. And it’s called sudden death syndrome and that’s essentially what they they described my sister’s death as she was in her home doing her laundry, and it was Anderson, it was like, you know, somebody just turned the switch off on her and it was just- it was- it was just tragic beyond words,” he explained.
The Georgia native shared that there were so many “unanswered questions” surrounding her death and that they did their best to get to the bottom of it.
“We wanted to know, could there be a family history of something that her children might have or may have? Your typical findings of an autopsy of someone 39 would be an aneurysm or an embolism or a blood clot of some kind and everything was inconclusive,” he revealed. “She had a pretty severe, uh, like orbital bone injury. So whether she fainted or not, I think she may have went into the floor and kind of knocked herself out. My nephew, uh was three at the time. And I just think I think if someone could have been there, maybe, maybe her chances of surviving would have been- they would have been a lot better.”
Luke described Kelly as the “best mother you could ever dream of” to her three children and said that she meant “everything” to him and his family.
The days after her untimely passing left the singer/songwriter feeling completely numb, but he said that he was ultimately able to find a sense of peace the moment he said goodbye to her.
“The morning of her funeral, I mean Anderson, I don’t know how to vocalize what I was feeling. I mean the nausea. I did not want to go in the funeral home and see my sister. I was just really… not not processing this well. And the fact that I knew at 5:00 p.m I was going to walk in that funeral home and have to deal with this- it was just really I just wasn’t doing well with it,” he admitted.
“And we get in a car and it’s the sensation you get in the car and you know that this has got to happen. And Anderson when I walked in the room- and I’m a pretty spiritual guy and I’m pretty grounded in my belief in Christ and Christianity- and I would say it was the first time in my life I felt a spirit of another world take away my burden in that room. When I saw her, it was like something, it was almost like a pressure valve released. And, and I just feel like between… I don’t I can’t explain it. It was truly like she let – she set me free in that room. And you know, my mother did not have that experience and and I think I was the only one in the family that had that experience.”
His brother-in-law, Ben Lee Cheshire, was left to raise their three children, Jordan, Kris, and Til, on his own. Seven years later, tragedy struck once again when Cheshire passed away, leaving the three children without both of their parents.
Luke and his wife, Caroline, stepped in, adopting the three children as their own.
“It’s just what you do as family. And I guess you go into like a tribe instinct and you, you do what you can to kind of make it […] But Til, you know, it wasn’t necessarily an adoption more like we were, we had to sign paperwork that he’s – he’s our responsibility. And watching him come into our home and have to grieve the loss of his dad was really, really tough. And to watch my wife step up and do the work that she had to do was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen,” he shared.
Luke pointed out that in the midst of devastation, you must find the “silver linings” in life, and that’s exactly what they’ve done.
“My oldest Bo and Til, I mean, it is all brotherly. It looks- it looks and smells just like two brothers complaining and fighting and wrestling and giving each other a hard time. But with Tate, my 15-year-old and Til, they have a really special bond, and I can’t imagine a household where Til would have never grown up in it,” he told Cooper. “And, I mean, it’s just been a blessing and a silver lining to have him and to watch the girls go through life and become mothers and… and get through life daily has been pretty inspiring too. I’m really proud of them.”
The “Most People Are Good” singer is no stranger to grief. His older brother, Chris, also passed away in 1996.
