DOLLY PARTON FOREVER

I’ve always known what song I would listen to at the dreaded moment I found out Dolly Parton was dead. The Grass is Blue might sound on the surface like a breakup song, but for me it is a song of mourning, of sorrow, an exploration of the way humans can lie to themselves to cope with the infinite darkness of life. A perfectly written song for any time the world threatens to destroy your sanity. 

Yesterday evening, I pressed play.

‘I’ve had to think up a way to survive 

Since you said it’s over, told me goodbye

I just can’t make it a day without you 

unless I pretend that the opposite is true.’

As she sang her lament about crossing over into ‘insanity’s bliss’, I too refused to believe the truth. Dolly Parton could never die. She was immortal. A world without Dolly Parton just wasn’t a world I wanted to live in.

And then the song ended, its mournful cry faded away. Tears streamed down my face. But Dolly wasn’t done with me. Right then the next track began, a gospel track called ‘I Am Ready’ with just Dolly’s haunting vocal at the beginning. She sang:

 

‘I am ready

Oh, my children

When Jesus knocks at my door

I’ll be there come morning

Don’t weep for me

I’ll be with my Lord’. 

 

All her life Dolly offered us country music magic, glitz and glamour unrivalled. But she also offered a spiritual guide for even the most secular of souls. Here was a gospel song released by Dolly decades ago, a forgotten album track and yet it was the exact divine message I needed to hear in that moment. 

Dolly was ready to go. Her husband Carl had died last year. She had been so ill recently, telling Brandi Carlile that her butterfly wings were tired. Her faith was strong and so death was no end for her. The lines ‘Don’t weep for me’ gave me strength. The music soared and showed us, her children, the way. 

 Of course, I only stopped crying for a moment. Then I immediately went online and spent the next two hours sobbing while reading all the tributes. My favourite was Jack White’s who posted a picture of Dolly and the words: ‘immediate saint.’

 Dolly once said: ‘I hope to die right in the middle of a song and right on the stage doing what I love to do. I hope to be about 120 when that happens.” But sadly there wasn’t a fantasy end for Dolly’s story. She was only 80. She desperately wanted to perform her residency in Vegas but it wasn’t to be. Her death from cancer had been a total shock to me, even though she had been saying she was ill for some time. We just weren’t ready for her to go yet.

In the end her final appearance was typical Dolly. Not at some grand Vegas stage or even in the hallowed venues of Nashville. Her last appearance was opening her truck stop in the middle of nowhere Tennessee. Bringing a little glitz and sparkle to those everyday people out on the road, just travelin’ thru. Even right up to the end Dolly never forgot where she came from or who she was working for. Her final act, like her whole life, was to offer us mere mortals a comfort break of sparkle on our journey through this sometimes hellish world.

Her music will live on, there’s no doubt about that. Jolene is already one of the most covered songs of all time. I Will Always Love You one of the best known. I know her other songs will be sung again by those who understand that music is the best way to unite and heal a divided world.

This post isn’t an obituary or a biography, since there’s plenty of great writing out there if you want to read about her life, her philanthropy and her influence. When I listened to all of Dolly’s albums in order I wrote a post which summed up what she gave me: lessons in how to GET TO LIVIN’. Now she’s given us her death lesson. She went quietly, with dignity, letting her family announce it to the world.

All summer I’ve been noticing butterflies everywhere. I just didn’t know what these butterflies were trying to tell me. Now I know that butterfly season 2026 was a reminder to appreciate everything in the colouring book of life while we still can. 

Dolly was as precious, sweet and rare like the butterfly she used as her signature emblem. We all loved her so much and yet none of us seem to be able to live up to her example. 

I know Dolly’s happy now wherever she is, free from the constraints of her human form, looking down on us useless mortals, fluttering another kind of wings. She asks of us only to dream more, listen more, read more, love more. 

So don’t worry about your children, Dolly. We’ll think up a way to survive. You showed us the way. We’re perfectly fine. We don’t miss you. 

The sky is green and the grass is blue.