Years before her death, Dolly Parton selected the song she wanted at her funeral

Dolly Parton’s relatives have confirmed that her funeral will be an intimate, private service attended only by close family. Still, one very personal part of the farewell is already known: the song that is expected to be performed at the ceremony. The country icon disclosed that choice more than ten years ago.

News of Dolly Parton’s death at 80 stunned people around the world on Tuesday. President Donald Trump has since directed that US flags be lowered in tribute to the legendary country performer. Her voice may no longer be heard in person, but the many treasured songs she left behind ensure that her musical influence will endure.

Long before she died, Parton had considered the day when those closest to her would have to say goodbye. Although her remarkable career produced an extraordinary collection of famous hits, the piece she hoped to hear at her funeral was not one of her own songs. Her reason for choosing it was profoundly personal.

She discussed those wishes in a 2014 conversation with Entertainment Weekly.

Dolly Parton appears at the press conference for her “Rockstar” album at London’s Four Seasons Hotel on June 29, 2023. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

Parton said she expected “I Will Always Love You” would be heard after her death, just as it was during Whitney Houston’s funeral. She recalled that when Houston’s coffin was lifted and the song began, she broke down in tears. That was the moment, she explained, when the reality that Houston was truly gone struck her.

Yet Dolly had another composition in mind for her own farewell, one whose connection to her life was much more intimate.

In 2014, she named the traditional country-gospel hymn “If We Never Meet Again” as the song she wished to have included when people gathered to say goodbye to her.

She described it as an old church song from the country-gospel tradition. Its message, she explained, is that even if loved ones do not see one another again on this side of heaven, they will reunite on a beautiful shore.

Southern Gospel composer Albert E. Brumley wrote the hymn. Parton also remembered its image of roses blooming forever in a place where painful separations never happen again.

The song held such powerful emotion for her because it had already accompanied another heartbreaking family farewell. It was performed when her father, Robert Parton Sr., was laid to rest in 2000.

Dolly explained that the hymn had been her daddy’s favorite. Her family sang it at his funeral, she said, and she wanted it sung at hers as well.

In the wake of Parton’s death, those earlier words now carry a depth they did not have before.

A life devoted to giving back

Parton will always be associated with classics such as “Jolene” and “9 to 5,” but the impact she made reaches well beyond her music.

For a People cover feature published in November 2025, she reflected on the modest childhood she experienced in rural Tennessee, years before the world knew her as a country superstar.

She was raised with her 11 brothers and sisters in a small, two-room log house in the Smoky Mountains. Their parents were Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton, and the family’s home had neither running water nor electricity.

Even amid those limited circumstances, young Dolly was already imagining an enormous future.

She remembered performing on the front porch of the family home at Locust Ridge, holding a tobacco stick and pretending it was a microphone while she sang with all her heart.

Musician Dolly Parton eats at Spago in West Hollywood, California, on March 10, 1983. (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

The woman who would later become one of country music’s biggest names said those childhood porch performances made her feel like a star.

Parton recalled dreaming that she might someday appear on the Grand Ole Opry or sing before a real audience. That simple homemade microphone, she said, carried her from the heights of the Smoky Mountains all the way to the top of the world.

She eventually achieved worldwide fame through music, yet her extraordinary career represented only one part of her legacy. She also devoted a significant portion of her life to supporting other people.

In 1988, Parton founded the Dollywood Foundation in Sevier County, Tennessee, where she grew up. Its first efforts centered on education and lowering the number of students leaving high school. Among those initiatives was the Buddy Program, which offered rewards to young people who remained in school.

She went on to establish the Imagination Library in 1995. The project was partly inspired by her father, Robert Lee, who never learned to read.

The effort began locally by delivering books to children, then expanded into an international literacy program. By 2025, it had provided more than 304 million books.

Parton’s charitable work also extended to protecting wildlife. Through Dollywood, she worked with the American Eagle Foundation to establish Eagle Mountain Sanctuary, where guests could learn about bald eagles and other raptors.

Country-and-western star Dolly Parton meets children at Magna Science and Adventure Park in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, on December 5, 2007. She chose the former steelmaking town as the first European community to join her Imagination Library. Launched in Sevierville, Tennessee, in 1996, the literacy program helps young children discover a love of books by mailing every participating preschooler a free title each month. (Photo by Pool/Getty Images)

After destructive wildfires swept through areas of Tennessee in 2016, she created the My People Fund. Families whose homes had been destroyed received financial support each month, and the initiative ultimately distributed millions of dollars.

Her giving included substantial support for Vanderbilt University Medical Center as well. Parton contributed $1 million to the children’s hospital in honor of a niece who had received leukemia treatment there. She later donated another $1 million for research into infectious diseases affecting children. An earlier $1 million contribution to coronavirus research at Vanderbilt also supported efforts linked to the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

Parton kept assisting communities after other catastrophes, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for people affected by floods in Tennessee and giving millions to recovery work after Hurricane Helene.

She additionally gave $1 million to the Salvation Army and backed innumerable other charitable projects throughout her life.

Seen in that light, the funeral song she chose seems especially appropriate. For decades, Dolly Parton sang about faith, family, love and hope. When she pictured her own final farewell, she turned to a hymn that had already helped her family endure one of its deepest losses.