Why is everyone so torn up about the death of yet another pop singer? Don’t these come and go every four months or so? “Why should the world fall to pieces at the death of yet another cosmetically enhanced, rhinestoned old warbler?,” a sodden middle-aged cynic like me might be expected to ask.
But I get it. I understand. So let me explain to you what Dolly Parton meant to me, and why I’ve had tears rimming my eyes occasionally over the past 24 hours, as a man who knows almost nothing of Parton’s music outside the biggest and most unavoidable of her hits. Her spirit will linger on, not just for the next week or so but long afterward. So many have written already about the grand and generous upward arc of her life story, from rural poverty to universally beloved fame. Instead, I can only write about Parton from the sole perspective on which I count myself a true authority — my own.
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