The couple spoke about losing their son River in 2019 in aninterview withToday.
“I was the one with River.
I was in the backyard with him when he went into the pool,” Smith said.
Credit:Jason Kempin/ Staff/Getty Images
“She could have at any moment said: ‘How dare you do this to our boy?
How could you have turned your back on our baby?’
“That might have been the thing that split us up forevershe didn’t do that.”
Bartlett, for her part, said she avoided blaming her husband “by the grace of God.”
“I just never felt that,” Bartlett said.
“This wasn’t something that he did or something that I didn’t do.
We’re a couple.
How could I ever put blame on him?”
The couple toldTodaythat they do theirbest to comfortother parents who have lost children and have found a community there.
“We knew that couples don’t make it,” Smith said.
“The odds are against us.”
“It was like: ‘OK, we’re going to do this.
We have to make this agreement for the other two kids.”
The couple are parents to an older son and daughter, Lincoln and London.
They had a fourth child, Maverick, three years after River’s death.
Smith announced this spring that he would leave country music to devote his life to ministry.
