This Life I Live: One Man's Extraordinary, Ordinary Life and the Woman Who Changed It Forever

by Rory Feek

  The story of men hurting Mom didn’t stop with husbands, strangers, or boyfriends. Her sons were some of the worst offenders. Me included. One by one, each of us took our turns disappointing her with our choices in life. Sometimes they were in the form of bold-faced lies we told, married women we slept with, or calls that came in the middle of the night, saying, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Feek, but we’ve got your son in our jail.” And sometimes they were worse things than that.

  Mom just took it all in stride. Her kinda stride, that is. Chain-smoking cigarettes and downing twelve-ounce cups and cans. She had a stronger back than I did, that’s for sure. With all the heartache that I’ve experienced, the weight on my shoulders has never been half the weight that was on hers.

  On one scorching-hot afternoon in the summer of 2001, I remember sitting in Mom’s trailer, whining about the tough day I was having. By that time, she was living just down the road from me in Tennessee, in an RV parked on a lot near the interstate. The RV didn’t run, which was perfect because Mom wasn’t going anywhere. She knew it too. Her life was at a dead end. Her three-pack, twelve-pack-a-day habits had stopped numbing her pain, and she was really feeling it. The emptiness had caught up to her, once and for all, I think. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice. I had found some success, had written a couple of hit songs that played on the radio, and was complaining about something or other in the music industry and how this or that wasn’t fair. Mom just sat there in that 150-square-foot trailer, smoking and listening. I was on a rant about my troubles when I looked up and saw a single tear rolling down her cheek. Like thirty years earlier, I asked, “What’s wrong, Mom?”

  This time she wasn’t talking about the rich guy in the fancy house. She was talking about me. The rich guy in the fancy farmhouse. And sixty years of never standing up for herself rolled off her tongue. “I’d give anything. Anything. Just to live your life for one day.”

  She stopped me dead in my tracks. I knew what she meant. I wrote songs for a living. I was paid to be creative. My work was fun, and I was well compensated for it. She had just come off an all-night shift waiting tables at the truck stop on Exit 69. Her arthritis and age made it impossible for her to keep up with the younger girls and the boss who was riding her back.

  Her tears started falling harder.

  I got up and put my arms around her. And I held my mother—for the first time, I think. And tears fell from my eyes too. I held her, and she cried, and she let the truth of her life and mine run down her cheeks and onto that dirty gray indoor-outdoor carpet. “The only difference between me and you, Mom, is that I follow my dreams. I believe in something and move toward it, and somehow, it comes to be. Don’t you ever want to be something, Mom?”

  And she went on to tell me about her dreams. About how she had always wanted to go to college and be a writer. How she loved to learn and wished that she’d had the chance to do something, be something more when she was younger. But it was too late now. She was too old. Mom and I talked a long time; then I got in my new truck and drove away, thinking, It’s a shame that she never gets a break.

  But then she did. I mean, immediately.

  I called Mom a few days later and asked her what was she doing, and like a dozen times in my childhood, she said, “Moving.” I laughed and asked, “Where?” She told me that she was moving into a brick HUD house in town. That she had driven to the local community college and asked if there was any way in the world a sixty-year-old woman could enroll. It turned out that there was. She was a displaced homemaker who’d raised five kids. She barely made any money. So she qualified for a half-dozen grants and even government housing and a monthly check. The next time I saw Mom, we were moving her black trash bags into a pretty darn nice duplex in Columbia, Tennessee—the town closest to us. And at sixty years old, she drove herself to her first college class and sat with a hundred eighteen-year-old freshmen, amazed and excited at the new opportunity in front of her.

  Two years later, all of us kids were there for her graduation. I’ve never seen a smile as big as hers the day she walked across that stage and they handed her that diploma for her associate’s degree. Never. Except maybe mine that day and my brothers’ and sisters’. We were all so proud of her, but I think she was the most proud. She, more than all of us, knew what it meant for her to get there. She had done something that no one—especially her—believed she could. I’d like to think that I played a small part in that change in her life. A part that I am embarrassed by, but a part in her beautiful story just the same.

  Six

  A HERO’S STORY

  I think all fathers are their sons’ first heroes. Some deserve it; some don’t. My dad probably falls in the second category.

  Dad didn’t earn that title . . . with his bricks and whiskey and girlfriends and such. But still, I looked up to him. All of us kids did. And no matter how absent he was in our lives or how many times he disappointed us, he remained a hero in our eyes. I know that hurt my mother. She did all the work, and he got all the glory.

  I’m what they call a romantic. I always have been. It’s ingrained in me somewhere. Part of my DNA. It’s the filter I see the world through, I think. My photographer buddy Bryan would say that my mind’s camera has a lens that adds a vignette to everything—always casting a blur on the edges and taking the focus away from the parts of life that my mind doesn’t want to see. That’s pretty accurate. I’m like a modern-day Norman Rockwell painting, a painting of a painting that I’m painting. No matter how many layers deep you look into the frame, you see the same thing. It’s not how the world actually is. It’s a little bit better. A little bit kinder and a little bit sweeter. I choose to see the world that way. I think at some point I must’ve had to work to make a conscious choice to see life that way, but then after a while, I didn’t have to work at it any longer. Now it just happens naturally, and I really can’t see life any other way.

  My father is part of that romantic vision. I have some black-and-white photos of him in the 1950s, standing beside Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles with large fins and girls with bouffant hairdos and names like Dolly and Beulah. His collar up and his black hair in a pompadour, like Brando or James Dean . . . only real. A member of our family. My dad. How could I not love a man like that?

  There were times with him that were good: making the trip across the Missouri River Bridge for an ice cream cone or having breakfast at the Wagon Wheel Cafe. Playing baseball with him at Jackson Park and seeing him run to get on base. He ran like a man. Full of joy and wonder but still cool. Men were still men then. They didn’t wear shorts and flip-flops like we do now. Dad was in jeans and nice leather shoes. Always. And a button-up shirt with his sleeves rolled up twice, revealing a tattoo on his forearm of a girl in a swimsuit, or a T-shirt that fit him well, even when his belly got a little rounder and the stubble on his jaw had some gray in it. He could be fun, and he had a great smile—something I still don’t feel completely comfortable showing.

  Looking at those old pictures, I see me in him. Him in me. Where my eyes meet the bridge of my nose. The same profile. The same brown eyes. And our passions are the same. Country music. Songs that tell stories. Old cars. And there are probably other things. Deeper things. My past lines up with his. He was a bit of a rounder, and I was too. Searching for love or acceptance or validation in someone else. I know that’s still there. Still in me probably, but I’ve learned to desire and pursue more rewarding things. Things that Dad never seemed to do. Things like honor. Respect. Commitment to my wife and children. And God. That’s the real biggie. I wish he could’ve known more of the good stuff before he passed away. Who knows? Maybe he did. And I just didn’t get to see it. Or I can’t remember it.

  But I do remember him telling us kids that he was gonna take us to Worlds of Fun in Kansas City one weekend. He promised us. It was a local amusement park, much like Six Flags, and none of us had ever been. All of our friends had been numerous times and had told us all about it, and now it was our time. We were so excited. When
the big day came, we were glued to the window; and when we saw his Caddy pull up, we dashed down the steps and across the apartment complex lawn and jumped in the car. He just sat there for a long time and didn’t say anything. I’m sure we were bouncing around in the car, ready to go. Finally he reached over and pushed the button that opened up the glove box. He pointed inside. Then he proceeded to tell us that someone had broken into his car the night before and stolen the two hundred dollars that he had saved to take us. He said he was sorry, but there was nothing he could do. Then he just sat there.

  We were disappointed, but we really didn’t care about the amusement park. We mostly just wanted to be with him. But he didn’t want to be with us. He just sat there and kept saying he was sorry, motioning for us to get out of the car. So we did. Soon all five of us were standing on the curb, watching him drive away, wondering what just happened. Trying to figure out why we couldn’t have gone and done something that didn’t cost any money, like going to the park or helping him do his laundry at a Laundromat.

  That hurt me. It hurt all of us. And somewhere inside, that little freckle-faced kid vowed to not be like that with his children someday. Sad thing is, though, I was. I let my kids down. Many, many times. Maybe not the way Dad did, but in a hundred other ways. Times when I put my feelings and my needs and my emptiness first, above theirs. I went on making dinner or writing a song or dating some girl—leaving them standing on a curb, wondering why their dad really didn’t love them.

  The last time I spoke with my father, it wasn’t good. It was November 1988, and I was in the service, about to be shipped off to Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. I had thirty days’ leave coming to me. Heidi was two years old, and Hopie had been born just a couple of weeks before. I called Dad from Memphis and told him I had some time and could come there to Kansas, and bring my wife and kids with me. He didn’t say anything. In the background it sounded like he was watching Jeopardy! on TV, and maybe he was distracted by that. Or, more likely, maybe his own worries were overwhelming him. He had remarried, had lost a baby, and then had another son and an infant baby girl to care for. Dad didn’t speak about his feelings to anyone that I know of—certainly not to me anyway. Chances are, he just had a lot on his mind. But he didn’t share it with me. He didn’t share anything. Just seemed uninterested. And so, for the umpteenth time, I hung up the telephone and said to myself, I’m not ever calling or going to see that bastard again. And that was that.

  A few days later my little family and I were in our car, on our way east with no big plans other than not heading west to see my dad. By the time I stopped at some friends’ house in Jacksonville, Florida, the phone was ringing. It was my mother, telling me that Dad had suffered a heart attack and died. I couldn’t believe it. No one close to me had ever died. Yes, my father had died. But no one close to me.

  A day or two later my sisters and I headed west after all. We went to his funeral, and we saw him there, lying in the casket. It was kinda surreal for me. I hadn’t seen him in a year or two, and for the girls it had been even longer. I was twenty-three years old and had never been to a funeral, and I didn’t know what took place at funerals or what was going on. I didn’t know how to act. Was I supposed to cry? Or be strong? Was I supposed to touch his hand or kiss his cheek when the line I was in left me standing over his plastic-looking hands and face? I wasn’t sure what to do. So I didn’t do anything. I just observed. I can honestly say that I didn’t cry over my dad dying. I don’t know why. I guess it’s hard to cry over the loss of something that you never really had. I’ve cried some tears over him in the nearly thirty years since then—mostly over what could’ve been, not what was. The truth of knowing he never got to see me realize his dream of playing the Opry and that my girls never got to know their grandfather and never will. That my wife Joey never got to meet him, and, even more, he never got to meet her and see what a lucky man his son was.

  I remember the drive, in the long Cadillac, out to the cemetery on the hill where he’s buried, and looking down at his grave and thinking, I’m gonna make you proud someday. And something inside of me reaching down and picking up the dream that he’d had for so long and carrying it back to Florida with me. Determined to make his dream—my dream—come true, one way or another. I remember that feeling.

  But the truth is, his dream had already been passed on to me at an early age. I can remember riding in the passenger seat of his Electra 225, crossing over the railroad tracks in downtown Atchison, and him telling me about a new song that came on 61 Country on his AM radio. The song was “Farewell Party” by Gene Watson, and Dad wanted me to hear it, to hear the singer’s voice, the words, and the steel guitar solo. And it wasn’t enough for me to just listen. He pulled that Buick over to the side of the road, put it in park, and we sat there for the entire three minutes as the song played. He pulled over so I wouldn’t be distracted and could hear every note, line, and nuance. Although I was only about eight years old at the time, I knew that song was a big deal to him. That music was a big deal to him. Important enough to sit on the shoulder of the road, listening with his little boy as the other cars and fathers and songs rolled on by. It was clear that country music meant a lot to him. So it soon meant a lot to me. Joey and I are friends with Gene Watson now and have played quite a few shows with him through the years. Dad would lose his mind if he knew that. I have no doubt he would be so proud if he were still here. But he’s not.

  They said he had high blood pressure. After he passed, his new wife, Linda, found some pills that I guess he’d been taking and didn’t tell anyone about. But that morning in the fall of ’88, the pressure and the stress of life was just too much. While standing at the counter, making a pot of coffee at four a.m.—his usual routine before he drove the sixty miles to work in Kansas City—he had fallen on the floor and died. He passed away right there in the kitchen, with Linda and their six-week-old baby asleep on the couch in the next room. She heard him fall and gasp for air, and she called 911. But by the time the ambulance came, Dad was already gone.

  My sisters and I spent a few days in Kansas after his funeral. We rented a car and drove around Atchison, looking at some of the houses we’d lived in and the streets where we rode our bikes. Then we made the twenty-two-mile trip to our real home. Just on the other side of Highland, down an unmarked gravel road, stood the old farmhouse we all had loved so much. The roof was falling in, and the weeds were waist-high around the porches. But we had to see it. Had to go back and get one more glimpse of the place where the world was right and Dad was not only living but was living with us.

  That house is long gone now. It’s just cornfields. There’s no sign that anyone ever even lived there. But we did. And probably quite a few families before us did too. I wonder if they made trips back with their families through the years like we did.

  My kids know that old place well. I showed them the tree that the dog climbed and the room upstairs where my brothers and I slept with no heat. We even carried a wooden post and a broken end table back in the car with us one time. That end table sits beside my recliner in the living room of our farmhouse. And the post is holding up the drink stand at Marcy Jo’s, the family restaurant down the street, named after my sister and my wife. Those things are part of the fabric of our lives now . . . reminders of a moment in time that we loved and how quickly it can all be gone.

  My father loved me. I know he did. When I was in my late teens, I sometimes would make trips to see him when he stayed at the little truckers’ motel in East Kansas City. It would be just him and me. And he loved me so much, I could feel it in his strong hug and hear it in the way he said the word son. He didn’t have to say it. But he did. He liked saying it. He always told us he loved us. But saying it was easy. I wanted to see it. And that was something he wasn’t good at.

  But none of that makes him any less of a hero to me. Like my mother, he was doing the very best he could with the tools and the pain and the scars he had. I know that, and I’m not angry with him. I miss him and
wish I knew him. Wish I really knew him. Thankfully, I can still see him from time to time. He shows up in the mirror while I’m shaving, in the way I talk with my hands, or in a dozen other parts of me. I am him. I am him, learning to be more. Hoping to be a hero to my children too. Hoping that when my time is done, I might have earned that role. Not by just telling them I love them but by showing it too.

  Seven

  THINGS THAT GO AWAY

  My father’s father’s father’s wife was full-blooded Cherokee. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve been told. That would explain the black hair and dark eyes that my dad had. And his strong facial features. And, sadly, maybe his style of gift-giving too.

  My father gave me a guitar one Christmas. Another time it was a gun. And once it was even a 1967 Ford LTD. He said he’d bought those things for me, that they were mine. But they weren’t. They were still his.

  Looking back now, I think, those things—like him—just stayed awhile, then went away. I don’t know why, they just did. That 12-gauge was at my house; he’d given it to me. Said it was mine. Said that I was getting to be a man and that a man was old enough to have his own shotgun. I treasured it. From that one gift came a hundred dreams.

  We lived in a small split-level house then, in a town near Omaha called Carter Lake, which was right next to the big airport. I spent my days studying the art of hunting. Dreaming of owning a bird dog so he and I could go on big hunts together. I read everything I could—every book, every magazine. I was going to have a yellow Labrador retriever that would pheasant and quail hunt with me. I would take my new shotgun and break state records for the most birds killed in one day and become known for training amazing bird dogs. I could see it. Of course, I was only thirteen or fourteen and couldn’t drive yet, not legally anyway, so I just dreamed. We didn’t live in the country, so I didn’t know how I would get to the open fields or get a dog. I just imagined going there, being there, and that it would be great and I would be great.