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Eric Church Gets Vulnerable About Grieving His Late Brother – And Admits One Thing He Would Have Done Differently
Everybody has to learn to deal with grief at some point in their life.
For Eric Church, that moment came on June 29, 2018 when his brother Brandon passed away at just 36 years old.
Many may not know, but Church’s brother played an integral part in his career: He not only helped Church co-write his first single “How ‘Bout You,” but after Eric moved to Nashville and was thinking about giving up and moving back home to North Carolina, his brother packed a bag and moved to Music City with him – sleeping on a fold-out couch as his brother chased his dream.
As you can imagine, the grief from the loss of his brother hit Church hard – but as he admits, he didn’t always deal with it the right way.
During a vulnerable new interview with Anderson Cooper, Church opened up on the grief he deals with from his brother’s death, and how he handled it. And at the time, the way he handled it was to just keep going:
“We buried him, and I played a show four days later because I had a show, and I knew he would want me to play the show.
‘He would want me to do this,’ you know, that kind of thing.
‘They would want me to keep going, keep plugging.’ It’s all these things you go in your head. And that’s right. It’s not wrong that they would. But I didn’t spend any time dealing with it. So I just kept playing, kept going. But I look back on it now, I’m not sure that was the right thing to do.”
Another mistake that he says he made at the time was trying to shield his young sons from the grieving process.
Church says that he and his wife Katherine made the decision not to take his young son, who was six or seven years old at the time, to the funeral. And while they thought it was the right decision at the time, it’s something he regrets now:
“We made a mistake. I look back on it now, I didn’t know it was a mistake at the time, but we made a mistake. My brother died. It was such a traumatic thing. And we decided my son … we decided not to take him to the funeral. We left him back with a relative, and we went to the funeral.
And I look back at that now. At the time, it sounded like the exact right thing to do because I was a wreck. I was a mess. My family was a mess. And I look back at it now. And sometimes it’s good for a child, if they’re in that age, five, six, seven, eight, to see everybody hurting, to see a life change of it, to see what that death is, that it’s a part of something.
So that’s one thing that I regret. If I could go back, I would go back. I would do that different.”
He admits that in the immediate aftermath of his brother’s death, he didn’t understand just how much things would change.
But he got a call from country music legend Vince Gill warning him that things would never be the same – advice Church says that he didn’t understand at the time:
“When my brother died, I didn’t comprehend that it’s never going to be the same again with my parents. with their relationship, with the whole family, the family dynamic. When my brother died, I wasn’t prepared for that part. …
I had a call right after from Vince Gill. And Vince Gill, iconic country artist, lost his brother. And of all people, like two or three days after my brother died, Vince called me. And I didn’t really know Vince very well. I’d met him.
And he actually was the first one that said to me, he said, ‘You don’t understand this now, but you’re never going to be the same. Your mom and dad are never going to be the same. Your sister’s never going to be the same. Y’all are never going to be the same as a unit. Nothing’s ever going to be the same. And the quicker you understand that, the better you’ll deal with it.’
And at the time, I didn’t get it. I was sitting there thinking, well, what’s grief? We’ve always been the family. But looking back on it, he’s exactly right. It never is the same. When something like that happens, it changes everything, and it becomes a new normal.”
That “new normal” is one thing that I didn’t understand during my own grieving process. I lost my fianceé a couple years ago when she passed away unexpectedly the day before we were supposed to get married. Obviously I knew things would be different, but when things settle down in the immediate aftermath you look around at all the things you thought you would be able to count on for normalcy and…everything’s different now.
And though it’s been nearly 8 years since his brother’s death, Church admits that he’s just recently started learning to deal with the grief and allowing himself to have those moments where he’ll allow himself to grieve the loss:
“Those things will come out of nowhere. And I think that’s probably just from not dealing with it the right way. Or maybe that’s what we all deal with, right? …
I guess I don’t even know how to describe it. I just don’t see it coming. That train’s not coming. And then there it is, right? And actually, it’s probably manifested more the last two or three years, I’ve had a lot of moments like that.
And you would think after five, six, seven years, that wouldn’t happen. They would be less frequent. But I’ve found that they’ve been more frequent the last few years. So I don’t know how to — I don’t know. … It’s been unexpected where some of that stuff’s come from.”
I’m sure that’s something that anybody who’s dealt with grief can relate to: Those feelings hitting you out of nowhere and taking you back to a place you thought you’d left in your past.
One thing people tell you in the aftermath of a tragic loss is that it will get easier in time. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, or if you just learn to deal with it better as time passes, but what they don’t tell you is that you’ll have those moments like Church is talking about that will hit you like a freight train out of nowhere and you feel like you’re back where you started.
Some of those moments you can see coming: I’ve been to probably 30 Eric Church concerts, and at least half of those were with her, so the first time I went to a show after she passed away and had to hear “Holdin’ My Own” without being able to put my arm around her was one of those moments that I knew was going to be hard, and it still is every time I’m at a show and hear that song.
Sitting at Red Rocks during Church’s show this past year on her birthday was hard, knowing that she would have been there with me if she were still here. But those are the things you can prepare yourself for mentally because you can see them coming.
But even more than the big moments that you know are coming are the unexpected ones that come out of nowhere, when the grief sneaks up on you and hits you over the head to remind you that it’s still there. It’s a monster that’s constantly lurking in the shadows, whether you know you’re carrying it with you or not.
One thing that Church says has helped him get through the loss, though, has been his faith:
“You trust that a higher power is in charge. And nobody wants to go through this, but you understand, at least for me, that this was how it was supposed to happen, and it’s unfortunate, and you use faith to deal with the next steps of that. It’s a great thing to have.”
Amen.
And for everybody dealing with grief, I’ll give you the best advice that anybody gave me as I dealt with my loss, something that’s helped me get through it and something that I think about every day:
Every day without them here is just one day closer to seeing them again.
The post Eric Church Gets Vulnerable About Grieving His Late Brother – And Admits One Thing He Would Have Done Differently first appeared on Whiskey Riff.
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