I learnt only a few hours ago that Ms Dolly Parton Dean had passed, and even now, the news sits with me. Not simply as sad news about someone famous, but with that strange heaviness we usually reserve for someone we actually knew.
Perhaps that is part of the remarkable legacy Dolly leaves behind. Beyond the songs, the films, the rhinestones and the extraordinary career, there was this extraordinary affection people had for her. She belonged to millions of people who had never met her, and somehow never felt like a stranger.
She came from the Tennessee mountains, from poverty and a large, close family, and went on to become one of the great forces in music. Once she arrived, boy did she stay.
There was the voice, of course, and the songs. But there was also Dolly herself — the hair, the heels, the rhinestones and that wonderful ability to laugh at herself. She was in on the joke and usually got there before anyone else did.
“But above all of this, I wish you love.”
— Dolly Parton, I Will Always Love You
For all the spectacle, she remained remarkably grounded. She never forgot where she came from, nor what it was to have little. Her generosity, particularly to children through her Imagination Library, said much about the woman behind the fame.
So did her faith. It was simply part of her — woven through family, gratitude, humour, hardship and the way she regarded other people.
And then there was Carl.
She married Carl Dean in 1966 and loved him for nearly six decades, while fiercely protecting the life they shared from the glare surrounding her own. Millions adored Dolly, but Carl had known and loved the young woman who arrived in Nashville before the rest of the world knew her name. His death last year must have left a silence in her life that few of us could understand.
Perhaps that is what we will remember most about Dolly. For all that was enormous about her life, she never seemed to lose sight of the things that mattered when life was small: faith, family, home, laughter, kindness and love.
The little girl from the Smoky Mountains travelled an extraordinary distance without ever quite leaving those mountains behind.
Rest peacefully, Ms Dolly Parton Dean.
The rhinestones shine a little less brightly today. Somehow, I don’t think they will ever look quite the same again.
The memory of the just is blessed.
— Proverbs 10:7
And through all the roads, all the mountains and valleys of an extraordinary life, Dolly knew she had never travelled alone.
“Even when I didn’t know it
Or couldn’t see it
There was Jesus.”
— There Was Jesus, Zach Williams featuring Dolly Parton
Mel x
