Joey Feek’s Family Celebrates Her Life With Graveside Picnic
It's been two years since Joey+Rory's Joey Feek passed from cervical cancer, but her family is honoring her with a graveside picnic together.
On March 4, 2016, the closing chapter to a remarkable story lived out by Joey+Rory’s Joey Feek officially ended. The wife, mother, singer and songwriter succumbed to her battle with cancer after valiantly fighting for her life.
“My wife’s greatest dream came true today,” Rory wrote on his blog, This Life I Live, at the time. “She is in Heaven. The cancer is gone, the pain has ceased and all her tears are dry. Joey is in the arms of her beloved brother Justin and using her pretty voice to sing for her Savior.”
Two years have come and gone since she took her last breath, but her legacy lives on in the hearts of her family, friends and fans. Though she may not be around in the physical sense, her family strives to keep her memory alive by honoring her every chance they get. To commemorate the two year anniversary, Joey’s husband and duet partner, Rory Feek and their daughters Indiana, Heidi and Hope (his from a previous relationship), gathered in the cemetery behind the family home for a picnic near her grave site.
“It’s been 2 years now since Joey passed away. I see her in every flower that blooms and every smile on Indy’s face. Today we had a picnic, in the cemetery, next to Jo’s grave. I think she would’ve loved it. I miss her so much,” wrote Heidi with a photo of her and her sisters seated on a plaid picnic blanket.
The photo wasn’t the first time the family honored their late matriarch. Her widower left a message for her on his second Valentine’s Day without her, writing “The days have somehow turned to years and healed our pain and dried our tears, but even now… sweet Valentine, I am yours and you are mine,” among a series of photos.
Joey’s life will continue to be shared and remembered when Rory releases the follow-up to his best-selling book, This Life I Live. Entitled Once Upon a Farm, the update to the Feek family story will capture Rory’s journey forward after the passing of his late wife.
“To tell the story of how Indy and I and our older girls are moving forward and of the hope that is unfolding now, I had to go backward and share more about the end of another great story of hope. Because this one couldn’t be told if that one didn’t happen,” he wrote on his blog. “One cannot be without the other. We couldn’t have this life we’re learning to live on our own, if we didn’t have the life we lived with my wife Joey before it.”
Once Upon a Farm will hit shelves on June 19.
