Dolly Parton Was My Jesus

Well, fuck.

Dolly Parton died today.

And I am not okay.

I know she was 80.

I know nobody gets forever.

I don't care.

I wanted forever.

Because Dolly Parton was my Jesus.

I simply don't have a better way to explain it.

Not because I worshipped her.

Because she loved people.

All kinds of people.

Without first asking them to explain themselves.

Without checking whether they believed what she believed.

Without sorting anybody into deserving and undeserving.

She didn't just preach love.

Dolly walked the walk.

In bedazzled five-inch heels.

She loved the fuck out of people.

Maybe that's why she needed the bigger boobs.

She had to fit all that Jesus into that tiny little body.

And somehow, even though she never knew I existed, I felt included in that love.

I think millions of us did.

That's what was extraordinary about Dolly.

She didn't just light up a room.

She lit up people.

She made us feel a little funnier.

A little prettier.

A little more welcome.

A little more hopeful about humans.

She made the whole daggum world feel warmer just by being in it.

She made love look like something you did.

And God, I loved her for it.

I loved the hair.

I loved the sparkle.

I loved the boobs.

I loved the filthy jokes delivered with that sweet little smile.

I loved the songs that could rip a heart open in three minutes.

I loved that she knew the difference between being generous and giving herself away.

I loved that children opened their mailboxes and found books because Dolly Parton thought children should have books.

I loved that she built things.

Owned things.

Made a fortune and gave enormous amounts of it away.

Knew how to say no.

Left people with more dignity than she found them.

She made goodness look joyful.

Maybe even a little naughty.

I needed to know someone like that was in the world.

And Dolly's always been here.

Until today.

That wrecks me.

Because I don't want her archive tonight.

I want her.

Alive.

I want the possibility of Dolly.

I want the future to still contain her.

It doesn't.

Grief is a dick like that.

And I don't remember a world before Dolly Parton.

Do you?

She was already here.

We were little girls.

Dolly was here.

We became women.

Dolly was here.

We got older.

Dolly was here.

Through every version of us, there was another version of her.

Still laughing.

Still sparkling.

Still loving people.

Still Dolly.

She wasn't ours.

But somehow she was.

She didn't know me.

I didn't know her.

And I loved Dolly Parton.

She never knew my name.

She never knew anything about me.

And somehow, I never doubted for one second that if I had walked into a room with Dolly Parton, there would have been room for me in it.

I think millions of us knew that.

There would have been room for us.

All of us.

Of course you belong.

Come on in.

How can there be a world without Dolly Parton?

How can there be a tomorrow without her?

In the morning, alarms will go off.

Coffee will brew.

The sun, with absolutely no respect for what has happened here, will come up.

And Dolly Parton will still be dead.

That's the obscenity of grief.

The world keeps doing world things after someone who made it better has stopped.

There will be time to celebrate her.

We'll tell our favorite stories.

We'll laugh.

We'll rewatch 9 to 5.

We'll play I Will Always Love You and discover that apparently we weren't sad enough already.

We'll be grateful.

Someday.

But I don't want gratitude yet.

I don't want to hurry grief toward something more comfortable.

Tonight, I want to be devastated.

I want to be unreasonable.

I want one more morning when Dolly Parton wakes up somewhere in the same world I do.

Just one more.

Please.

But there is only before.

And after.

I have spent my entire life in the before.

Tonight is my first night in the after.

And I hate it.

What an extraordinary gift to have gotten to live in the world at the same time as Dolly Parton.

To have heard that laugh while it was still being laughed.

To have watched that hair get higher.

To have heard the songs when she was still here to sing them.

To have watched her love the absolute fuck out of this world.

We were so lucky.

And it still wasn't enough.

I wanted more.

I wanted her to stay.

Dolly poured so much light into this world that we didn't know how much of the brightness was hers.

We just lived in it.

Maybe that's the cruelest thing about losing a light like Dolly.

We didn't know how bright it was until now, standing in what's left.