Brantley Gilbert Loses His Grandpa

Brantley Gilbert received some sad news towards the end of his honeymoon: His grandfather passed away.  He described how he got the news to Country Countdown USA’s Lon Helton: “I was actually on my honeymoon when I got the call, it was 2:30 in the morning, my uncle Bill called me, and my wife was sitting beside me and asked, ‘Are you OK?’  And I said, ‘Yeh I’m gonna walk outside for a minute,’ and I did, and didn’t know if I was gonna break down, I didn’t know what I felt.  I was in shock.”

Brantley said at that moment, he thought of the message in his current hit, “One Hell of An Amen,” and how it now applied to this situation:  “I’ve been preaching about this song being for everybody, how other people are finding a way to relate to this song, and I watched it happen to the guy who wrote it!  The song took on a whole new meaning for me.  It totally fits for him.  He battled for a long time, he was a fighter, fought the whole way out, loved my grandmother every step of the way, she was sitting right there beside him, I hope I can love my wife like that, and live my life the way he did, and if I can that’s One Hell of an Amen.  He was 82, had COPD, emphysema for over 20 years. He fought to breathe.  He’s in a better place.”

Brantley said he also learned a great lesson from his grandmother: “The crazy thing about it, she took care of him for a long time at the house.  Then she fell and broke her hip, so they took him to a nursing home.  When they did, they had them separated at first, and every time they took her out of the room, he’d be out of it.  They had to revive him.  But when they kept them in the same room, until his last days, they were in the same room, so she was the first thing he saw when he woke up.  And he finally got to go home, but it left me with the thought that he fought the way I want to fight, and he loved the way I want to love.  That’s the way I want to love Amber, if I make it to that age, just love her with everything I’ve got.  Out of all the things you can wish for in life, what more can you wish for than having somebody love you the way he loved her.  It’s just one hell of an amen.”

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Category: Audio