Hindsight’s always 20/20. There’s no doubt that if you’ve lost someone close to you, there have been times when you’ve looked back on moments when you wish you had done things differently. Whether it’s conversations you had or didn’t have, or moments you missed out on, it’s always easy to second guess things after someone’s gone. I lost my fiancée a couple years ago, and I can’t tell you how many of our conversations I’ve replayed in my head, or things I wish I had done differently knowing that our time together would be cut short. It happens, and it sucks, because you know there’s nothing you can do to change it now. And recently, Eric Church opened up on one of those conversations with his late brother that still bothers him. Church recently sat down with CNN host Anderson Cooper for an episode of his All There Is with Anderson Cooper podcast. And the country singer got vulnerable while discussing the loss of his brother Brandon, who passed away on June 28, 2018 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. After his death, it was revealed that Brandon passed away as a result of chronic alcoholism, and that he had a history of alcohol withdrawal-induced seizure disorder. And without getting into too much detail, Church reveals that he now wishes he had shown “more grace” to his brother while he was struggling: “My brother had, like your brother too, had troubles. And a regret I have is when he was going through some of those troubles, I did a little bit of the … ‘You’re not doing the things you’re supposed to be doing.’ And it was a little bit of the tough love, big brother thing. I wish I’d had more grace and been more compassionate now, looking back at it. But at that time, you think, ‘Oh, come on, get your s— together’ kind of thing. And I regret that now.” Of course it’s easy to say that now, but at the time you never truly know what the right decision is. You think you’re doing the right thing, and maybe in reality you are, but losing someone makes you question things and have regrets that you wouldn’t have had if things had turned out differently. But Church says he still feels his brother with him – especially on stage: “I feel a lot of it with the music. There’s not a night that goes by that – there’s a song called ‘Sinners Like Me’ that was on my first album. And it’s a line in it about a headstone and going to see my grandfather. And now I throw my brother and my grandfather in that when I do that line. So at least there I feel him when I’m on stage.” 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 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.” Grief is messy, and there’s no doubt that anybody can relate to having regrets when you lose somebody important in your life. But I’m also a firm believer in not second-guessing something that seemed like the right thing to do at the time. And I also don’t think there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to deal with grief. Everybody deals with it in their own way and on their own schedule, and there’s nothing wrong with how you deal with it. Unfortunately, that’s a lesson I wish I didn’t learn the hard way. The post Eric Church Admits That He Regrets Not Having “More Grace” For His Late Brother: “It Was A Little Bit Of Tough Love” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.