Near the end of his honeymoon after his June 28 wedding, Brantley Gilbert received some sad news: His grandfather had died.

Gilbert tells Country Countdown USA that he received a call from his uncle at 2:30 in the morning delivering the news.

"My wife was sitting beside me and asked, ‘Are you okay?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, 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," Gilbert recalls. "I was in shock.”

The country singer's grandfather was 82 and, according to Gilbert, suffered from COPD and emphysema for 20-plus years.

"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," Gilbert says. "I hope I can love my wife like that and live my life the way he did ..."

Gilbert explains that his grandparents are role models for the type of relationship he hopes to have with his new wife, Amber. His grandmother took care of his grandfather at home, until she broke her hip, at which point, they were both moved to a nursing home.

"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," Gilbert explains. "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," he adds. "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?"

The Boot extends our condolences to Gilbert and his family on their loss.

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