Plans for Dolly Parton’s funeral are already in place following the country icon’s death at 80 on Tuesday.
“At Dolly’s request, a small, private service will be held for immediate family,” the singer’s team shared in a statement.
However, Parton did reveal one major detail about her funeral arrangements to fans more than a decade before her death.
“I’m sure they’ll be playing “I Will Always Love You” when I die, just like they did with Whitney Houston,” she told Entertainment Weekly in a 2014 interview.
“When they picked her coffin up and started in on that song, I started to cry, and I thought, ‘Oh my Lord.’ That’s when it hit me that she was really gone.”
Houston’s cover of “I Will Always Love You” played as pallbearers carried her casket out of the church at her 2012 funeral. The song was originally written and recorded by Parton in 1973; however, it was Houston’s 1992 cover — recorded for her acting debut opposite Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard — that turned the track into a global hit.
But that wasn’t the song Parton herself wanted at her own funeral.
“There’s a song called ‘If We Never Meet Again.’ It’s an old country-gospel church song that talks about if we never meet again this side of heaven, I will meet you on that beautiful shore,” she told EW.
“‘Where the charming roses bloom forever and where separations come no more.’ That was my daddy’s favorite. We did sing it at his funeral, and I would like it to be sung at mine.”
It is unclear whether there will be a live rendition of the song at her funeral; however, Parton has duetted with her goddaughter, pop star Miley Cyrus, on a number of occasions in the past.
Asked in a previous interview what her funeral song would be, Parton famously replied: “I don't know — but I won't be singing it!”
Parton’s nephew Bryan Seaver announced the news of her death on behalf of the family, saying: “Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus.”
Seaver also revealed that his aunt requested to be laid to rest in a “beautiful bed of plush cotton.”
“After a life wearing heavy rhinestones, she finally deserves to be comfortable and have some rest,” Seaver said.
According to TMZ, the singer will be buried in the mausoleum at Woodlawn Memorial Park in Nashville, Tennessee, next to her husband Carl Dean, who died last year.
Her representative later confirmed that she had died at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, “after bravely facing a brief battle with cancer,” surrounded by loved ones.
Everyone from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé to Eminem and Linda Ronstadt has paid tribute to Parton, describing her as “the gift that kept on giving” and saying her legacy would be “an everlasting one.”
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump ordered flags to fly at half-staff in the U.S. to honour the singer, writing: “This is a true loss for millions of people. There has never been anyone like her, and never will.”
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