18 years after Kelly Bryan died, Luke Bryan discussed misinformation about his sister’s 2007 death in a candid interview and shared what that difficult experience was like for him.
“I never really explained what happened to my sister, there’s some misinformation out there on the internet and I think some people wonder what happened and they think that we’ve tried to cover it up,” Luke, 49, explained while appearing on the Wednesday, October 29, episode on CNN’s “All There Is” podcast.
“There is a very, very small percentage of people who die for no reason — and it’s called sudden death syndrome and that’s essentially what they described my sister’s death as.”
Luke then recalled of her passing, “She was in her home doing her laundry and it was like somebody turned the switch off on her and it was just tragic beyond words.”
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The “Country Girl” singer went on to note that there were “so many unanswered questions” regarding Kelly’s death, sharing that her autopsy was completely inconclusive.
“She was everything in our life,” Luke said of Kelly, who was the mother to kids Jordan, now 30, Kris, now 27, and Tilden, now 23. “She was the best mother you could ever dream of, and we all leaned on her for so many things and it’s hard to wrap your head around her being gone.”
Prior to Kelly’s passing, Luke already lost a sibling when his older brother, Chris Bryan, died at the age of 26 in a vehicle collision in 1996. While Luke already grieved Chris’ death, he said that processing Kelly’s passing was “so different.”
“My brother, you can conceptualize a car accident,” he said. “But you can’t really conceptualize someone that was healthy as a horse and she’s just gone.”
Luke added that the experience was made even more difficult by watching his nieces and nephew grieve the loss of Kelly. “I could not understand how these kids were going to go through their life without the best mother on the planet,” he said.
However, Luke did note that having Kelly’s kids around helped his own grieving process. “I can see her in them,” he said. “I can see mannerisms in them. I can see so many tangible things in my nieces that are my sister.”
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The Bryan family experienced tragedy again when Kelly’s widower, Ben Lee Cheshire, suddenly died in 2014 at the age of 46 of a heart attack.
“At this point in life, you’re like, ‘What’s going on here, God? What have we done to have this happen?’” Luke said. “It just hit me like a ton of bricks.”
After Cheshire’s death, Luke and his wife, Caroline Boyer, adopted their nephew, Til, and became parental figures for their nieces. The couple are also the parents to Thomas, 17, and Tatum, 15.
“It’s just what you do as family,” Luke said. “You do what you can to try and make it.”
While Luke has gone through many hardships, he said the tragedies have helped put things into perspective for him.
“I’ve just been put in situations where I really try to appreciate every day,” he said. “And appreciate every moment that you can with people and people that you love.”
