by Rory Feek
I can only imagine how precious those letters are to each of them today. Something to have and hold that Joey took the time to write specifically to them. Words from her heart to theirs.
It has been a year and a half since I handed them out . . . and yet our middle daughter, Hopie, has never read her letter from Joey. I have asked her about it a few times, and she always answers the same way . . . “I’m not ready.” Something tells me that her answer is about more than just being ready to read the letters, it’s about being ready to say goodbye. In Hopie’s mind, I’m sure, it is all she has left of Joey. The last words she will ever hear from her mother.
I have a copy of that letter here on this laptop that I am writing on. I read it again this evening as tears rolled down my cheek, thinking of how painful it must have been for Joey to write those words. To have to choose what things to say and what to leave out. I so wish I could tell you what Hopie’s letter says, but I can’t. It isn’t my place. But I can tell you that it is beautiful. Just as the one to Heidi is too. As beautiful as goodbye letters from a mother to her daughters can be.
I’d also like to tell you that Joey wrote and left me a last letter too. A special envelope filled with treasured words that I keep in a drawer by our bed or a lockbox beneath my desk. But I can’t. Joey didn’t leave a letter for me. Instead, she left me something else to remind me how much she loves me.
Indiana is the sweetest, most beautiful love letter a man like me could ever hope to have. She is a letter that never stops speaking to me. One that covered me in kisses this evening before she went to sleep. And one that will wake me in the morning with a great big smile . . . reminding me that part of Joey is still here with me. With all of us.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, honey.
About the Author
Rory Feek is a true renaissance man, known as one of Nashville’s premier songwriters, entrepreneurs, and out-of-the-box thinkers. He is a world-class storyteller, crossing all creative mediums, from music and film to books and the Internet, and is the New York Times bestselling author of This Life I Live.
As a blogger, Rory shares his heart and story with the world through thislifeilive.com, and he has more than two million Facebook followers. The love story of Rory and his wife, the story of her battle and loss to cancer, and his vignettes of unwavering faith and hope in the face of tragedy inspire millions of readers.
As a songwriter, Rory has written multiple number-one songs, including Blake Shelton’s “Some Beach,” Easton Corbin’s “A Little More Country Than That,” and Clay Walker’s “The Chain of Love” and has had dozens of his other songs recorded by Kenny Chesney, Randy Travis, Reba McEntire, Trisha Yearwood, Waylon Jennings, and many others.
As an artist, Rory is half of the Grammy-winning county music duo Joey + Rory. He and his wife, Joey Martin, toured the world and sold hundreds of thousands of records. Their latest album, Hymns That Are Important to Us, sold seventy thousand copies the first week and debuted at number one on Billboard album charts. It went on to win a Grammy for Best Roots Gospel Album.
As a filmmaker, Rory wrote and filmed the touching documentary To Joey, With Love and directed the upcoming feature-length film Josephine, an epic love story set during the declining months of the Civil War, with a screenplay he cowrote with Aaron Carnahan. Rory has three other screenplays in process. He also writes, shoots, and edits Joey + Rory music videos and is the creator of the television shows and specials in which the duo has appeared.
Rory and his youngest daughter, Indiana, live an hour south of Nashville in an 1870s farmhouse near their family-owned diner, Marcy Jo’s Mealhouse.
Follow Rory at thislifeilive.com.
The story she said he was born to write.
Her story. His story. The love story of Joey and Rory.
“I have never known two greater people in my entire life. Not many people touch lives in the ways that they have. Joey will always linger in our hearts and in our memories, but so will they both for their beautiful hearts and all the wonderful work they’ve done.”
—Dolly Parton
A gifted man from nowhere and everywhere in search of something to believe in. A young woman from the Midwest with an angelic voice and deep roots that just needed a place to be planted. This is their story. Two hearts that found each other and touched millions of other hearts along the way.
Photos
An outtake from the photo shoot for this book
The farmhouse when we bought it in 1999
The farmhouse today
Little Joey in overalls
Wendy, Hopie, Heidi, and Dillon playing cards at Heidi’s house in Alabama
Photo by Aloosina Toomalatai
Christmas morning with my first guitar
Joey at her high school graduation
Hopie and Heidi with me at the farm just before Joey came into our lives
Heidi singing “Daddy What If” with her dad on stage in Texas, 1990s
Hopie and Heidi next to the 1956 Chevy Bel Air we drove to Nashville when we moved in 1995
The girls by the restored Bel Air the day I gave it to them in May 2017
Our wedding day, June 15, 2002
Walking Joey down the aisle . . . Joey was so beautiful
Putting on our work boots right after the wedding
With fifteen Dr. Pepper cans tied to the back of my ’56 Chevy
Joey and me singing for the first time on stage at the Grand Ole Opry
With Blake Shelton at the #1 party for “Some Beach,” 2004
The Grammy Award we won for the Hymns album
Joey and me on CMT’s Can You Duet, March 2008
Joey with baby ducklings at springtime
One of our first Christmas pictures together as a family
Joey loved being in her garden
Joey was so excited about the potting house I gave her on her thirtieth birthday
At the family cemetery on the farm, April 2010
Joey’s greatest joy was the day Indiana was born
On the beach in Hawaii, January 2015
Our little ray of sunshine
Saying goodbye to the girls was one of the hardest things Joey had to do
Indiana and me outside the farmhouse, fall 2017
Potty “choo-choo” training Indiana
The one-room schoolhouse we’re building at the farm
Hopie, Indy, Heidi, and me, fall 2017
Missing Joey—this is the same spot in the cemetery behind our farmhouse where we filmed our When I’m Gone video a few years earlier