By Jonathan Tobias

I know I’m not the only one who’s been strangely affected by the passing of our lady, Dolly Parton. Our Appalachian chanteuse. Our muse, our siren, our bringer-together of folks across all kinds of aisles. Our quiet benefactor of so many people and causes.

Our conscience.

Last Tuesday night, after I heard the dreadful, unexpected news that she had passed, I turned on Ken Burns’ masterpiece documentary Country Music just to see that smile again, and to hear that haunting hill-and-holler voice that could never stay earthbound but always seemed to fly like a dove into the mountain sky.

And honestly, I got—and get—choked up.

We’ve all gone through the passing of other entertainers. It’s a different thing from personal tragedy, I know, but we suffer a little when a singer walks offstage and we know they’re not coming back. I miss Kris Kristofferson still. I light a candle for Johnny Cash. Not to mention Tom Petty, David Bowie, Aretha Franklin, Prince. I’m still bummed out about John Denver. And the crushing loss of my favorite contemporary Christian singer, Rich Mullins.

And you can fill in the blanks with your own muses and Orpheuses, your own bards who have sung your life’s soundtrack, accompanied your long car rides, and sung you to sleep after a date gone wrong.

But Dolly.

I had no idea.

Hers was a voice I had simply presumed would never go away, something I could turn on and see her gorgeous “I know darn well I’m outrageous” self, those sparkling eyes, that soft high pretty voice, and know there was always a melodic register floating above the turkey scrimmage of our present politics and polarity.

Someone who could sing “9 to 5” and make us laugh ourselves silly while she and Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin tied up Dabney Coleman because he darn well deserved it and justice was finally done.

I’m not here to give you a list of reasons Dolly was wonderful, or why she was one of the best of us. I couldn’t fill the list anyway, and there are better sources that can.

Suffice it to say that we will probably never know the extent of all the good she did. Why? Because she didn’t make a big deal of her generosity. She didn’t take pictures every time she gave money to poor families, books to children, tuition to disadvantaged students, or a million dollars toward Hurricane Helene relief in our state.

Now politicians are falling all over themselves to claim some association with her name.

That pisses me off.

But Dolly?

She’d make room for them too.

She’d say, y’all come in. There’s room.

That’s why I miss her.

In an especially closed-in and stuffy moment in American history, when we’re so darn busy gatekeeping and shutting doors and closing ourselves in, Dolly made room.

She made room in country music.

She brought the Jesus of the Smoky Mountains into the mainstream.

She made room for working women.

She made room for poor Appalachian children through books.

She made room, as an American born-again Christian, for people whom much of American Christianity has spent its time excluding.

She made room for the needy and the marginalized, the downtrodden and forgotten.

She showed millionaires and billionaires the only reason God lets you get rich is so you can give away what you have to those who have not. Dolly knew that God is the final owner and only lets us borrow his stuff long enough to give some of it away.

And somehow she made room for people who disagreed with one another to love the same woman.

She was, as my church choir director Michael said at choir practice last Wednesday night, a “bringer-together.”

When I pull myself together over Dolly, I’ll watch Steel Magnolias, my favorite of your movies, though I’m such a wimp that I usually skip over Shelby’s long fade. But I’ll linger over Truvy’s good advice for hard-hanky times like these: “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.” And this: “I have a strict policy that nobody cries alone in my presence.”

Darn. We need more people on this planet who talk like that. Maybe that’s why we’re all so verklempt.

And I’ll listen to “Jolene.”

But Dolly, when I see you in heaven I’m going to chide you gently for not dumping your two-timing man.

It darn well wasn’t Jolene’s fault.

It was the fault of your pissant man, the one who talked about her in his sleep while you lay there crying.

You were better off without that jerk.

You were always better with your beloved Carl Thomas Dean, whom you met in a Nashville laundromat in 1964, married in 1966, and remained married to for nearly 60 years, until his death last year.

That loss was still so new, wasn’t it, Dolly?

And Dolly, I don’t think Porter Wagoner really deserved your immortal anthem, either—the one you wrote, holy smoke, on the same day you wrote “Jolene.”

I’m sure Porter had his virtues, but he was a controller, like too many men have been with women. And somehow you managed to leave him without becoming cruel.

You sang farewell, gratitude, sorrow, freedom.

And then you flew on your own wings.

That song became larger than the man it was written for.

Larger than the circumstance.

It became one of the great songs of love and parting because you understood something difficult:

you can leave without hating.

You can walk away without destroying.

You can love and still go.

Maybe that’s another kind of making room.

When I finally pull myself together enough to listen to that song again, Dolly, I’ll hear it differently now.

You spent a lifetime making room.

Always love.

That was your way.

And now may you rest in the everlasting arms of the One whose love has room enough for everybody.