When the announcement erupted that Dolly Parton had died Tuesday, my first reaction wasn’t really sadness as much as disbelief.

I immediately hoped it wasn’t true and that this was just another one of those celebrity deaths that starts on Twitter, spreads everywhere, and gets debunked before everyone has even had time to process it.

Dolly couldn’t be gone because, in my mind, Dolly wasn’t going anywhere.

She had just been talking about the future and all the things she still wanted to accomplish, which somehow made the news even harder to believe because she never seemed like someone looking backward at a life already lived.

Even at 80, there was still something else she wanted to do, another idea she wanted to pursue, and apparently another chapter she thought she had time to write.

I think a lot of us thought she had that time, too.

Dolly Was Always There

I don’t remember discovering Dolly Parton because, like so many things from childhood, she was simply always there.

I remember my mom playing her music and seeing Dolly on television, and I remember that unmistakable voice that could somehow be incredibly powerful while also being soothing enough to make you want to stop whatever you were doing and listen.

My parents used to think I had a crush on her, which, for reasons that became fairly obvious later in life, wasn’t exactly what was happening, but they weren’t wrong about how much I loved her.

What strikes me now is that my opinion of Dolly never really changed from childhood into adulthood, which is pretty remarkable when you think about how differently we begin to see the people we grew up watching once we become adults ourselves.

You learn more about people as you get older, and sometimes the celebrities you admired become disappointing while others simply become irrelevant, but Dolly somehow remained the same person in my mind.

The woman I saw as a child seemed to be the same woman I saw as an adult, someone with a good heart, an even better soul, and a mind that always seemed to be thinking about how she could support someone else.

She also accomplished something that is incredibly difficult for someone who had been famous for as long as she had: Dolly never overstayed her welcome.

She Was Always Invited

There are celebrities who stay in the public eye long enough that eventually you can feel them trying to convince a younger generation that they still belong there, but Dolly never felt like she was trespassing in the public view because she was always invited.

She made music with Miley Cyrus, who is also her goddaughter, and it felt completely natural. Decades after Dolly first became famous, she collaborated with Sabrina Carpenter without it feeling like some desperate attempt to introduce herself to another generation.

Dolly didn’t need to chase relevance because relevance seemed to keep finding Dolly.

No matter who you were, where you came from, or whether you even considered yourself a country music fan, Dolly Parton was an icon whose appeal managed to cross the kinds of generational and cultural lines that usually separate entertainers into very specific audiences.

She was also one of the few celebrities I can remember thinking nobody could possibly have beef with, besides whoever “Jolene” was about, for obvious reasons.

That kind of universal affection feels increasingly rare in a culture where seemingly everything and everyone eventually becomes something to fight about, particularly online, but Dolly somehow managed to exist above so much of that noise.

Maybe it was because she could laugh at herself, maybe it was because she never seemed interested in reminding everyone how important she was, or maybe people simply recognized something genuine in her that becomes increasingly difficult to fake the longer someone remains famous.

Whatever it was, I think I assumed it would always be there.

Millennials Are Learning That ‘Someday’ Ends

I never saw Dolly Parton perform live, and that is something I will always regret because there was never a conscious decision not to see her; I simply assumed there would eventually be another opportunity.

Maybe as a feature or special guest at a festival. I remember praying that she was going to come out with Sabrina Carpenter at Coachella earlier this year.

She was still recording music, still showing up with younger artists, and still talking about everything she wanted to do next, so there was no urgency because, like so many things we put off, I figured I would get around to it someday.

I’m starting to realize that “someday” is becoming a dangerous word for millennials, because we’re reaching the age when the people who seemed permanent during our childhoods are reminding us that nothing actually is.

The singers our parents played, the actors who were always on television, and the cultural figures who were already legends before we were old enough to understand what a legend was are getting older, and whether we like admitting it or not, so are we.

We millennials spent so much of our lives being described as the young generation that there is something strange about realizing we’re now watching pieces of the world we grew up in disappear, one person, place, and institution at a time.

Rest in Peace, Dolly.

Dolly’s death feels like another one of those pieces disappearing because she was famous before I was born, she was there when I was a kid listening to my mom play her music, she was there when I became an adult, and she was still there in the 2020s making music with artists who weren’t even alive when some of her biggest songs were released.

There had never been a version of my world without Dolly Parton, which is probably why my brain has had such a difficult time accepting that there suddenly is.

Just days before she died, Dolly was talking to PEOPLE about how many things she still wanted to accomplish, and perhaps the saddest part is that we’ll never know exactly what all of those things might have been.

She thought there was more time to do them, while I thought there would be more time to finally see her perform, and somewhere between those two things is a lesson I don’t particularly enjoy learning as I get older.

Dolly Parton felt like she’d be here forever because, for my entire life, she had been.

But maybe one of the last things she can teach my generation is that we should stop assuming the people we love, the places we want to visit, and the things we keep saying we’ll eventually do will still be waiting for us whenever we finally decide that someday has arrived.

About the Author

Anthony W. Haddad is a Fresno-based reporter and columnist known for his award-winning Millennial View column series, feature writing, and festival coverage. His work blends personal storytelling with cultural commentary, highlighting the people, issues, and experiences shaping the Central Valley and beyond.

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