Joey Feek Cancer Update: Rory Admits ‘I Don’t Know Why She Loves Me’

As Joey Feek nears the end of her battle with terminal cancer, her husband, Rory Feek, is trying to understand how he earned her love so many years ago.

According to Rory’s blog, This Life I Live, Joey has always loved cowboys — particularly the king of country music, George Strait. Rory said she has always loved the cowboy way of life and could have had any cowboy she wanted. Instead, however, she chose him.

“Joey loves her some George Strait. She always has,” Rory wrote in his latest post titled “one last kiss.” “He’s her go-to guy whenever she puts on a cd and is cleaning the house or driving her car. And when romance is in the air, it’s not Michael Buble’ or some crooner that she wants me to put on… she wants king George. And I am more than happy to oblige. A love-affair with a singing cowboy who lives a million miles away in her dreams seems safe enough for me. Heck, I think there are really only two or three men out there that I would’ve had to worry about being jealous of… George, Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. The last two are because of the movie Lonesome Dove. My wife and I have watched ‘Gus’ and ‘Woodrow’ make the long cattle-drive to Montana a half-dozen times or more over the years. And she gets that look in her eyes when she watches that movie. She’s enamored by those men. By that lifestyle. Joey loves real cowboys. And me.”

Joey Feek always dreamed of living the western lifestyle, even as a young girl. And while she could have had her choice of cowboys to marry, she chose to settle down with Rory in their little farmhouse in Tennessee. Even after all these years, Rory admits he isn’t sure why Joey loves him — he says he’s a long way from being a cowboy.

“I don’t know why she loves me,” Rory wrote. “She could’ve had any cowboy she wanted…. could’ve had the western life she dreamed of as a little girl riding her first horse Velvet. But she didn’t choose some handsome Marlboro man with a Sam Elliot mustache and a thousand-acre ranch… instead, she chose our little farm and she chose me. And I’m a long way from a cowboy. We do have horses now…well, the two that I got for Joey for her birthday this last fall (though she and I only got to see them a couple of times before our lives took us back to the Cancer Center in Atlanta and then here to her hometown in Indiana). And unfortunately, she will never get to ride those or any horses again. They will instead be grazing in the pasture around the family cemetery in the back field behind our farmhouse, where my bride will soon rest.”

As the Inquisitr previously reported, Joey Feek was diagnosed with stage 4 cervical cancer in May 2014, three months after giving birth to her daughter Indiana. She later underwent a radical hysterectomy and several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. Although she appeared to be getting better, an October 2015 scan revealed that her cancer had returned and was spreading quickly. Her cancer was now considered terminal, and Joey opted to stop treatment and return to her home in hospice care to spend the remainder of her days with her family.

Since then, Joey’s health has been a roller coaster — one day they think she will beat this disease, and the next she takes a turn for the worse.

“Sometimes I feel like the boy who cried wolf. We’ve been here going through this for months and months now. Though many ups and downs. Nearing the end, doing better, nearing the end again. Hoping. Praying. Believing.”

In The Time That You Gave Me from Hickory Films on Vimeo.

In the same blog post, Rory revealed that the end is near. Shortly after Indiana’s second birthday (February 17), Rory said Joey told him she was tired of fighting and was ready to go home. Joey met with each of her family members and told them goodbye before she drifted off into a deep sleep. The hospice nurse told Rory that his beautiful bride only had a few days, at the most.

“A few more days… In the 40 short years that Joey has lived, my bride has accomplished many great things… she’s lived a very full life. But even more than that, she has loved those around her greatly and been loved greatly in return. I can honestly say that Joey’s isn’t just a life well-lived, it’s a life well-loved.”

[Image via This Life I Live]