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Life’s little moments are giving Joey Feek touching strength.
Nearly one week after she entered hospice care, the 40-year-old country singer is not letting her terminal cancer take more than it has already staked claim.
“A walker with wheels and a seat was delivered here yesterday,” wrote her husband, Rory Feek, on his blog This Life I Live on Thursday. “When we pulled it out for her this morning, Joey just laughed and said, ‘I can’t use that … it’s for old people.’ Then she grabbed the handles and pushed herself out of the room.”
Joey’s mission: to spend time out of bed with her daughter, 20-month-old Indiana, whose mother has been fighting cervical cancer for most of the baby girl’s life.
“When she reached little Indiana playing with toys on the living room rug, she said, ‘Come on Indy, mama will take you for a ride,'” wrote Rory. “So I helped Indy onto the seat, and Joey pushed her across the living room, through the kitchen, around the island and table, and back to her toys. Indy grinned ear-to-ear and so did we.”
Country music’s inspiring couple, known as Joey + Rory, are drawing support from their family in her last chapter.
“[Joey] was up earlier,” Rory wrote of Thursday morning. “Her sister Jody helped give her the morphine injection that goes in her port and helped her to the bathroom and back.”
Rory, who has been reflecting on their love story as he prepares to lose his wife, summed up the family’s approach to their struggle in an emotional entry on July 10.
“Some roads we go down in life are smooth and easy, and some we take are rough and rocky,” he wrote. “This one’s gonna be a little bumpy and scary at times … but we’re gonna go down it together the same way we’ve gone down all the ones before – hand in hand – taking it one moment, one hour, and one day at a time.”
And that they have. When Joey shaved her hair off after chemotherapy, so did her three sisters – Jessie, Julie and Jody – plus her dad Jack and niece Alyssa. The tight group has faced the topic of loss head on, especially on Joey’s last visit to her hometown of Alexandria, Indiana.
“She is spending important time with her mama and daddy and three sisters in the farmhouse she grew up in,” Rory wrote of their bittersweet trip on Oct. 31. “Joey and her family have laughed together and shed many tears as they’ve walked down memory lane together – reminiscing about their school days, the Halloweens and Christmas’, and the journey that has brought them and all of us here.”
He continued, “They’ve swallowed hard and had some difficult conversations that they didn’t want to have. Conversations made even harder by the memory of losing their brother Justin to a car accident when he was only 17. But mostly, it’s been beautiful.”
Days later, his two daughters from a previous relationship – Heidi and Hopie – arrived for a visit.
“She told them how much she loved them, and how proud she is of them,” Rory penned on Nov. 3. “And how proud she is to be their mother. And then she talked with them about the one thing that she didn’t think she would ever have to talk with them about: Leaving them.”
This article originally appeared on People.com.
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