Luke Bryan Reveals Late Sister's Haunting, Mysterious Cause Of Death

For the first time, Luke Bryan has revealed his sister Kelly Bryan‘s cause of death… and it’s SO spooky!

As you might recall, back in 2007, the country star’s beloved sister died suddenly. She was just 39 at the time. She left behind her husband as well as two daughters, Jordan, 30, and Kris, 27, and a son, Tilde, 23. It was absolutely tragic — and incredibly shocking considering she’d been healthy.

Up until now, Luke and his family have stayed hush-hush about what happened, but in a raw episode of Anderson Cooper‘s podcast All There Is, he finally shared all the eerie details. And it really is eerie. The Play It Again artist started off:

“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 wonder what happened and think that we’ve tried to cover it up.”

Then came the big reveal. The 49-year-old shared:

“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 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 tragic beyond words.”

OMG. What???

Unfortunately it’s real. According to Healthline, sudden death syndrome is a loose term to describe various cardiac conditions that can lead to cardiac arrest and death. Most people don’t know they have it until they’ve suffered a cardiac arrest, and many aren’t diagnosed as it can be difficult to determine.

The American Idol judge noted it took “awhile” to get an answer after her death:

“Yeah, yeah, obviously, we wanted to know what had happened because there was so much, there was just so much unanswered questions. And we wanted to know, could there be a family history of something that her children might have or may have?”

He explained that “typical findings of an autopsy” for someone his sister’s age would be “an aneurysm or an embolism or a blood clot.” But for Kelly, “everything was inconclusive.” He explained:

“She had a pretty severe, 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 was 3 at the time.”

If “someone could have been there, maybe her chances of surviving” could have “been a lot better,” he suspected.

Whoa…

Have you ever heard of such a thing? Like “somebody just turned the switch off on” a person? How scary! That’s also gotta be such a hard cause of death for the family to wrap their heads around. Everyone wants concrete answers when mourning the loss — especially the sudden loss — of a loved one. This kind of result would be so haunting.

As you can imagine, this was a tremendous tragedy for the family. Luke continued:

“She really was everything in our lives. She was a mother of three children and she was, I mean, the best mother you could ever dream of. And we all leaned on her for so many things and it’s hard to really wrap your brain around her being gone.”

Reflecting on her funeral, the singer said he still doesn’t “know how to vocalize what [he] was feeling” that morning:

“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. And we get in a car and it’s the sensation you get in the car and that this has got to happen.”

While he considers himself a “pretty spiritual guy” who is “pretty grounded in my belief in Christ and Christianity,” for the “first time” in his life, he felt a “spirit of another world take away my burden” at the funeral:

“When I saw her, it was like something, it was almost like a pressure valve released. 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. My mother did not have that experience and I think I was the only one in the family that had that experience.”

Heartbreakingly, the family faced another unimaginable tragedy when Kelly’s husband, Ben Lee Cheshire, died of a heart attack just seven years later in 2014. At the time, Luke and his wife Caroline took in their nieces and nephew (they’re also the parents of Thomas “Bo”, 17, and Tatum “Tate”, 15). Opening up about the adoption, he expressed:

“It’s just what you do as family. And I guess you go into a tribe instinct and you do what you can to kind of make it … But Til it wasn’t necessarily an adoption more like we were, we had to sign paperwork that 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.”

So amazing what they did for those kids. It must’ve been so, so emotional for them all.

He’s learned through this how important it is to “find silver linings” and “appreciate” them, even on the hardest days. One of those? The bond his kids have with their cousins:

“My oldest Bo and Til, I mean, it is all brotherly. 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. 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.”

Amazing. There’s always something to be grateful for! Watch the full conversation: