Rory Feek Reflects on First Mother’s Day Without Joey

This is the first Mother’s Day sweet 2-year-old Indiana is celebrating without her beloved mother, Joey Feek – and the first for Rory without his wife by his side.

Since Joey passed, Rory has been very candid about his intentions to celebrate her life with their daughter and in a touching post written on his blog, “This Life I Live” Rory reflects on his role as a parent, past, present and now future.

“For more than ten years I was a single father of two young daughters… Heidi and Hopie,” Rory writes. “I can’t tell you I was a great father. I tried. I think was a good father, but the truth is I was still a young man struggling to find myself, while the girls were growing and finding out who they were. I made so many mistakes and was so selfish.”

Rory continues to say that his older daughters have grown into “beautiful, loving, intelligent women” and he loves being a father and always has.

“Joey always said that that’s part of what attracted her to me when we first met. But neither she, nor I, had any idea how important that would be to us years later,” he continues.

“For years after Joey and I got married, I dreamed that God might bless her and me with a baby. A baby that we could love and cherish and raise together. A child that was part her, part me, and all Him. And part of that dream was that I might be given a second chance at being a father.”

Rory says his perspective shifted last spring when he and Joey realized “more-than-likely, she wasn’t going to live to see another Spring” and how that realization brought Joey to tears.

“But not because of the news that the cancer had spread and there was nothing more the doctors could do.She cried because Indy was going to lose her mama, and I was going to be a single father again.”

Although Joey is no longer physically with the family, her heart – and their celebrations – still go on.

“Though my beautiful wife sleeps in a bed of clover behind our farmhouse, we still celebrate her on this special day and lift her up and give her flowers,” Rory writes. “This is not my day. It is hers. Joey loved being a mother more than anything else in the world. And she is still Indy’s mama. And Heidi’s and Hopie’s.”

Rory says that he sees a lot of Joey in his young daughter when she’s asleep in the carseat and they’re driving.

“And I still see Joey beside her. With us. Everywhere we go. And all the pain and fear that I feel melts away… and it’s replaced by the feeling of how lucky I am… that we are,” he writes.

“Thank you for the beautiful gift my love. Happy Mother’s Day Joey.”