by Rory Feek
It was January 2014 when we heard the word cancer again. Mom called each of us on her cell phone from a waiting room at the community hospital in Columbia and said, “You might want to come down here.” She didn’t say why. She didn’t have to. We knew.
She had gone in that morning for a scan to see why she was having a hard time swallowing. Her throat had been bothering her for a while, and she thought it might have been acid reflux causing it. That’s what she hoped, anyway. But inside, she probably knew or suspected what it was. When we got to the hospital, the doctor showed us the scan and explained that the mass on her esophagus was a squamous cell carcinoma. Esophageal cancer. And they were pretty sure there were some spots on her lungs too. We knew enough about cancer to know that when it returns, it isn’t a good thing. Mom did too. There was a good chance that this one was going to leave more than just a scar.
We went with her a few days later to see an oncologist. That didn’t go well. He was blunt. He brought up her smoking again. This time Mom wasn’t going to put up with it. She was mortified and felt disrespected and demanded to see a different doctor. So we arranged for her to have another oncologist, and this one took a softer approach. She needed the cancer to be random and not related to the cigarettes, so we all just played along. My brothers vowed to quit smoking again, then doubled the number of packs they smoked a day. It was heartbreaking for all of us, and stressful. My sisters, though, were amazing. So loving and patient with Mom through all of the meetings and scans and opinions on how to treat it. Then Mom told us she had decided on a plan.
She was going to do nothing.
She had no plans to quit smoking again or to stop drinking or anything else. Her time had come, and she knew it. She was going to live. That was her choice, and we all knew that she would most likely not live long, but it was her choice, and she was going to do nothing.
We were outraged. We demanded that she fight. The doctors said she had a decent chance of surviving if they did the big surgery, where they remove the esophagus and stretch the stomach up to your throat—if she lived through it, that is. But it was a chance. We thought she was being weak. Giving up too soon. All so she didn’t have to quit smoking. Dang, I hate those cigarettes! I said to myself for the thousandth time.
But I was wrong. That wasn’t the case. She wasn’t quitting or being weak. Over the next six months she would show us, and everyone around us, what it meant to be strong. To have courage. To live. And to die. The way you want. On your own terms. It was incredible.
Mom was living at that time in a little white-frame house, just down the road from us, that Joey and I had purchased for her a few years earlier. That house is one of the things I am most proud of—to have been able to do something for her. Truly do something that she couldn’t have done on her own. She loved that house. It’s the only one she ever owned. The only piece of land that was actually hers. And she was so proud of it. She planted roses and moonflowers all around and spent her days watering and weeding and sitting under her big covered patio, with a cigarette in her hand and her children and grandchildren all around her.
She also loved her neighbors. She brought them flowers and meals and called them daily, and they all loved her. That little house was more than a house. She finally had a home of her own. Even if it was for only a short while.
A month or two after her diagnosis, hospice came in. And she mothered and loved each of them. As the ladies from hospice checked on her, my mother checked on them and always left them feeling better about themselves than when they came. As her health declined, her joy increased. She loved life—what was left of it. She truly loved it and lived it to the max. That spring and early summer, my brothers and sisters and I were at her house constantly. We spent every Sunday having brunch together, grilling out and laughing and gardening and listening to her stories. It was strangely beautiful. Her dying and it giving her grown kids the chance to really live. Together.
I had no idea at the time how important Mom’s death would be. Not to me but to my wife. How Joey seeing her mother-in-law be so strong in facing the unknown would help her in her own journey a year and a half later.
But for that time, it just felt good. It felt right.
Aunt Mary came to live with my mother that summer. For almost two months she stayed with her and kept her company and loved on her. After all those years of Mom being at her house, Aunt Mary knew how important my mom was to her and wanted to be there for and with her, in her time of need. And she was incredible. It was Aunt Mary on the other end of the line when I got the call early one morning that July: “Rory,” she said, “you need to get down here.”
Since Mom’s house was only a mile or so from mine, I was there in no time. I found my mother in the laundry room. Fan running. Cigarette burning. She was struggling to breathe but still forcing a smile when she saw me and my siblings. We put our arms around her and told her how much we loved her. We did. We all did. And I think she knew it. Within an hour or so, Mom would pass and a shell of herself would be left in the chair. Mom’s body was still there, but she was gone. That was clear to me.
I hadn’t been around death much. Not at all, really. I had seen my wife’s beloved dog, Rufus, pass away a few years before and had experienced his spirit leaving his body when the vet gave him the shot that would relieve him of unbearable arthritic pain. I saw his eyes a moment before, and then after. He was gone. It was the weirdest thing. I didn’t really know what to make of it then. And I didn’t know how to feel about it as I sat beside my mother, her hand growing colder as the time passed. Strangely, it was the same.
My sister Marcy lost it. Completely. She wouldn’t find it again for almost a year. She was completely unprepared for the loss she would feel. No medications or midnight trips to the emergency room or even trips out west to weekend grief retreats would help her. Only time would.
When I had stood over my father’s casket at his funeral, I didn’t know what to do. But there at Mom’s house, I did. When the men from the funeral home came, I told them I wanted to pick her up and put her on the linen-covered stretcher that would wheel her to the long vehicle that would take her away. I wasn’t afraid or nervous. It felt natural. This was my mother, for God’s sake. She had picked me up and held me in her arms the day I was born. I could hold her in mine the day she left us.
There is another family that lives in my mother’s white-frame house now. I try not to be hateful to them, in my mind, when I drive by, but sometimes I am. It bothers me to see their cars parked in Mom’s driveway—one of them up on blocks in the carport that she loved. To see the clutter on the front porch and in the yard that she loved so much. But, in another way, I recognize that this is life. That it’s beautiful. My sister Marcy already had ripped up every flower and bush that Mom had and replanted them at her house. These people now have dozens more growing. Beautiful flowers and roses everywhere. Mom would love seeing them. And it clearly looks like life is going on there. Lots of it.
As it should be.
Twenty-Two
NEVER GONNA HAPPEN
I remember it too well. I wish I didn’t, but I do.
It was the spring of 2000, and my green Expedition was parked in the driveway of our farmhouse. Heidi was sitting in the passenger seat, and Hopie was in the back. I was explaining to them that I was getting back together with the girl I had been dating. Again. Although I had told them the last time was the last time, I explained that I had changed my mind and had decided to try to make a go of it again. To make it work.
Heidi started sobbing. So did Hopie. They were upset and rightly so. They didn’t trust the girl I was dating, and, even more so, they didn’t like how she treated me—how much she had hurt their father. It’s not that she was a bad woman; she was just bad for me. Like so many other girls I had dated before her, there had been a physical chemistry between us but no magic when it came to the heart. But I had once again resolved to make it work. I was tired of failing at relationships and had poured a year
and a half, on and off, into this one. I was bound and determined to turn it into something good or die trying.
The kids were beside themselves. They had been drug through many relationships since their mother had moved on from our lives. And though none of them were great, this one had been especially hard on us. With tears in her eyes, Heidi begged me not to get back together with her. She knew it wasn’t good and, different from me, she knew why.
Wiping the hurt that was rolling down her cheeks, she said, “Don’t you see it, Dad? Everyone knows you deserve something great, to be with someone special. Everyone knows it, Dad. Everybody but you.”
It broke my heart to break my girls’ hearts. But I couldn’t help it. I was too wounded. Too lonely. Unable to make the right decision. I listened, and then, against my daughters’ wishes, I got back together with the girl. And as they suspected, and I did, too, it didn’t last. We broke up again, one final final final time a few weeks later.
I was devastated. Emptier than empty.
Sometimes rock bottom is the place for us to be. Usually, though, we just don’t seem to recognize the bottom, and we keep digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole that’s going nowhere. Until one day, tired and exhausted, we give up. And start trying to climb out.
I would have to learn the hard way, again and again, before I would actually ever really learn anything. I was stubborn. Prideful. And God needed me to get all of that out of my system before He could really work in my life. And when I finally did, a funny thing happened. Not only did I change, so did everyone around me.
Twenty-Three
A NEW FAMILY
Sometime after my mother and brothers and sisters moved to Tennessee, I saw my family do an about-face. They were different. Kinder. Better. The funny thing is, though, the only one who really did any changing at the time was me.
My family had always been fractured. Hurt. Wounded. Struggling to be something better than it was. Something beautiful.
There were times through the years, after we were grown, when we got back together—but a distance remained. It still does now, in some ways. But it’s better. Much better. I’ve learned to love my family for more reasons than the common Irish blood that runs through our veins. Warts and all. And, even more so, they have learned to love me.
By the time my family started moving to Tennessee in late 1999, God had been working on my character for a year or so. Teaching me patience and love and honor. Things that, at the core, didn’t come easy for me. But as I changed, as I softened, so did they. I almost didn’t recognize my mom and brothers and sisters. I thought I had woken up into a different family than the one I was born into. A good family. One that really, truly cares about one another.
I learned a lesson in that. After years of thinking that the problem was them, I realized that it was actually me. Not necessarily in an “it’s all my fault” sort of way, but more in a “be the change you want to see” way. I don’t know what happened. But if I do the math, that’s how it adds up. We became more of a family when I became more of a man. But I couldn’t fix all of it. It’s about all of our journeys. About the good and the bad. Our lives together never stayed just one way or the other. They were always evolving. Changing.
Not too long after we became close, we got fractured again and hardly spoke. Someone teed someone off (probably me), or somebody hurt someone’s feelings or got in somebody’s business or asked about something they weren’t allowed to ask about . . . and we grew apart. But then, over time, we found ourselves back together. I’ve come to realize that we’re never going to get it figured out. We’re not going to come to our senses and be the family I want us to be. We’re just going to be us. And that’s okay. Life is complicated, and family is even more complicated. I am learning to embrace it for what it is and not dwell on what it’s not. To love even the slightest bit of headway we make, to celebrate the small victories and not worry about the war. To laugh at the insanity that it is sometimes, instead of letting it drive me crazy.
I think this mind-set has made it easier for me to love all my siblings. And, even more so, it has made it easier for them to love me. I have to constantly tell myself, “They’re doing the best they can with what they have,” and I have a feeling they are at their houses right now, thinking of me, saying, “He’s doing the best he can with what he has.”
I love that.
Twenty-Four
CIRCA 1870
The house was built in the 1870s. Restoration on it began in 1999, right about the same time it began in my heart.
It was summer, and I was house hunting. It was my first time looking for a house to buy. My people usually go through their whole lives and never buy a house, but I knew that before too long I was probably going to be able to afford one. As I mentioned earlier, a song I had written became a big hit on the radio, and the royalties all began magically to add up and, within a month or two, turned into a six-figure check that I received in the mail. And then another smaller one.
I looked at only three houses, really two, before I bought the one we live in now. I guess I wasn’t a very smart shopper. I only had one real thing I was looking for. Old. That was it. Ideally, I think I wanted it to be a farmhouse. I had no idea why really. I had been living in the city pretty much my whole adult life. The kids and I were in a really nice apartment complex outside of Nashville, and they were going into fourth and sixth grades. A house in a subdivision made more sense, and something new or nice made even more sense. I had no idea how to fix up an old house. Even if I knew how, I didn’t have the tools.
But that day as I drove down Highway 431, around a curve, and saw the homemade For Sale sign at the end of the driveway, I took note and wrote down the number on a little scrap of paper. It looked like an old place. Pretty big, too, white with barns around it. I drove on since I was on my way to look at a house in a little town called Lewisburg, about fifty miles south of Nashville. The picture in the ad that I had seen was of an older white gingerbread-looking house on five acres. When I got there, I realized it was practically brand-new. Made to look old. I just backed out of the driveway. Didn’t even walk up to it. Instead, I drove to a phone and called the number on the scrap piece of paper.
“Thirty acres and the house for a hundred and sixty thousand,” the man said. More or less. I could buy more land around it if I wanted or as little as five acres. He said the house was pretty run-down, built around 1870, and the family that was living in it had been there since the mid-1930s. I hung up the phone and drove straight to the house.
Harold Blaylock came to the door. Pulling his overall straps up, he shook my hand. He had a Chapel Hill Air Conditioning and Funeral Home farmer’s cap on. He invited me to meet his wife, Joy, and then drove me around the property in his old pickup truck. I liked him immediately. He said they’d been there since he was ten years old, but due to his wife’s ailing health, they were gonna need to move into town. They were hoping it would go to someone nice, who would appreciate what it meant to them and the families who’d lived in it before.
By the time I shook his hand good-bye, it was also to say, “It’s a deal.” Harold and his sister Reba financed me, and I gave them the down payment a couple of weeks later. They moved out that weekend, and the kids and I started working on it while they were still moving boxes into their truck and trailer. It was pretty rough living for the girls and me the first couple of years, but gradually it got better. Nicer.
I took a friend of mine who was a carpenter through the house to look at it not long after I bought it. We stood on the front porch afterward, and when I said, “Isn’t it something?” he looked at me like I was crazy and said, “You got bigger cojones than I do, son.” I didn’t know what he meant.
“Do you know how much time and money it’s gonna take to fix this place up?” he asked. I didn’t. And I actually didn’t have a clue. Then he said, “I would never do it. I wish I could, but it would be too scary.” And then he patted me on the back and added, “But you g
otta gamble big if you want to win big.” Before he left, he told me that if I stuck it out, the house would be an amazing place to raise my kids and pass on to them when I’m gone. And he was right. It is.
There were times I wanted to sell it. Or burn it down. And just take off running for Nashville or somewhere easier. Closer to my friends and to the world and the people I knew. But I kept thinking about what he had said, so I stayed and continued working on it. Even when I didn’t want to, I stayed. And for two years, pretty much all I did was work on the house, fixing it up.
What I didn’t realize was that God had given me the house so that as I was working on it, He could work on me. I spent countless hours and days by myself, painting and caulking and hanging drywall and plumbing and a million other things that needed fixing. All the while, I think, God was fixing me. Healing parts of me that were broken. As the house began to come back to life, so did I. And it happened without me even realizing it. Much like the house, my changes were subtle. I would be working on one part of the house, making little improvements, constantly aware of the huge list of things left to do and not really seeing that the place was becoming beautiful. Unrecognizable, in a good way, to the neighbors around us. That’s how my character was changing too. I saw a long list of things that still needed to be worked on, but people began to see the stuff that had been restored. Made new again.