On The Passing of Dolly Parton

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Congratulations. You lived in the time of Dolly Parton. An infinite gift from above. Not dissimilar to those that lived in the time of Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Mother Teresa, Willie Nelson, and Queen Elizabeth, your own time has overlapped with this transcendent entertainer, sage, poet, angel, and prophet that time will never forget, and likely fail to ever replicate, but hopefully never ceases to attempt to emulate.

Even though Dolly’s time with us has reached its end, like a multitude of vessels or crevices whose walls are concave, the contributions of Dolly Parton’s character are collected upon this earth in deep and vast pools for all of us to go and partake from and be refreshed by, cleansed, reinvigorated, wiser from the the experience, now and forever.

Country music? This doesn’t even begin to contain the multitudes of this woman’s towering contributions across the entire expanse of humanity, and for the benefit of all the nations. For 80 years, Dolly Parton exemplified to everyone how best to be a human being. She defined the pinnacle of the human experience refined into one character full of love, forgiveness, acceptance, generosity, understand, wisdom, and light.

Dolly Parton’s life will be remembered in the coming days in short and long recitations both dry and eloquent, enumerating her contributions across a host of artistic disciplines, not just country music. Parton’s acting resume would make her passing notable in its own right. Her canticles in Gospel, her works in pop were award-winning moments themselves, and acted as bridges to and from her country catalog, and to country music in general. She was the genre’s greatest ever ambassador.

But you already know about all of these things about Dolly’s life, recalling them as tenderly as you do details of your own, because they are so integral and intertwined with your experiences. This is Dolly Parton we’re eulogizing, after all. Though no one discipline, medium, or even country or people were the sole domain of Dolly’s influence, it’s the beaming pride of every single lover of country music that beyond everything else, Dolly Parton more than anything else can be counted as one of their own.

Dolly Parton’s incredible longevity as a performer means nearly all of us have never known a world without her in it. Even as the world descended into chaos as it wants to do so often these days, Dolly Parton and the kind-heartedness she exuded was a constant.

Dolly Parton played, sang, and wrote some of the sweetest songs ever to pass across the tympanic membrane, evoking characters in your mind’s eye, and making you feel their emotions like few other storytellers in her time or any other could. Yet Dolly’s own story was the story of America. She grew up dirt poor in a cabin with her siblings, achieved incredible-worldwide success and fame, and then returned that favor back to the bosom of America in the form of love, charity, literacy, inspiration, opportunity, and of course, entertainment.

Now, the babies born unto the bosom of America and beyond, they will only know Dolly Parton in the past tense, as a memory in the minds of others, as a folk hero and a patron saint of so many causes. Usually it takes a tragic ending to a magnanimous person’s life for a date to be forever marked as the day of their passing. Words fail, and emotions swell at the news that Dolly Parton is gone. But forever will the world hold the date of August 25th, 2026 deep in their hearts as the day that Dolly left us.

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“I enjoy what I do. I enjoy being loved—I love that. I always ask God to let me shine a light and uplift mankind because that is my purpose. I look fake, but my world is real to me.” — Dolly Parton.



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