Grief knows no timeline.
No matter how many years go by after losing the person you love, some moments and objects can still bring all those painful feelings rushing back.
Rory Feek recently shared an intimate video of just such a moment, when he discovered an old Valentine’s Day card his late wife and duet partner Joey Feek wrote to him before she died in 2016.
Filmed in 2021, the video shows Feek reading Joey’s message and dissolving into tears.
It had been five years since she died at that point. But as Feek pointed out in the caption of his post, her loss was still deeply painful.
“Sometimes the grief will sneak up and overcome you when you least expect it,” the singer wrote.
“Although it had been five years since she had been gone, in my heart, it still felt like yesterday,” he added.
He also shared “Me & the Blues,” a song featuring Vince Gill, which he says took on a whole new meaning after Joey’s death.
He wrote it “when I first bought the old farmhouse and was struggling, wondering if I’d make a mistake to move so far from Nashville [and] the friends and life we’d had before,” Feek recounts.
“I of course, had no idea at the time the lyric would hit home in a much more profound way a couple of decades later,” he went on to say.
Joey Feek’s Memory Lives On
Since her death, Feek has kept his wife’s memory alive in blog posts and social media remembrances.
In recent weeks, he has shared several videos revolving around Joey, including a throwback video from 2015, which shows the two of them being interviewed and performing music off their Hymns That Are Important to Us album.
Read More: Watch Rory Feek’s Daughter Sing a Hymn With Her Mama, Joey
He also shared an old video of Indiana — the daughter the couple had together — singing along with a recording of Joey in the car.
How Did Joey Feek Die?
- Joey Feek died of cancer on March 4, 2016. She was 40 years old.
- She and her country singer husband shared every step of her journey with fans.
- Indiana was just two years old when her mother died.
What Has the Feek Family Been Doing Since Joey Died?
Rory has continued to release music and share his life with fans via his blog.
In 2024, he announced that he had found love again with Rebecca, Indiana’s schoolteacher. The couple got married that summer.
Read More: Rory Feek Has Found Love Again, 8 Years After Joey’s Death
In recent years, he’s also had a falling-out with his two oldest daughters, Heidi and Hopie, who are both in their 30s and born from a marriage Feek had prior to meeting Joey.
A Difficult Family Estrangement
Heidi and Hopie say that their estrangement was the result of a culmination of issues, and he denied their requests to attend family counseling with them.
They say they’ve been blocked from seeing or communicating with Indiana — after formerly being a big part of her life — as part of this feud.
They’ve also said that they reconnected with their birth mother, Tamara Gilmer, who was not in their lives much as children. The daughters claim that Feek misrepresented why Gilmer wasn’t around, and that he kept her from them growing up.
Feek has countered that Gilmer’s story about why she was absent is untrue, and said that he believes it’s up to himself and his daughters — not a counselor — to resolve their issues.
He also said he has been distancing Indiana from his daughters because their world views don’t align with his, and because they allow her to watch screens too much when she’s at their houses.
A Shocking Paternity Revelation
In February, Feek’s oldest daughter Hopie revealed that she’d taken a DNA test that yielded some surprising results: Feek is not her biological father.
She said she’s been getting to know her actual biological father, and that this new relationship has provided some healing.
Read More: Rory Feek Not Surprised by Daughter’s Paternity Test News
Feek says he wasn’t all that surprised to learn the news and shared some details and a timeline to explain why.
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