Dolly Parton was laid to rest in a private family funeral in the days following her Aug. 25 death at the age of 80, just as she'd requested before her passing.
Following her death on Aug. 25 at the age of 80 after a brief battle with cancer, the country music icon was laid to rest in a private funeral for her immediate family, just as she’d requested before her passing.
The small event was held at Woodlawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum in Nashville, Tenn., on Aug. 28 where Parton was buried next to her husband of nearly 60 years Carl Dean, who died in March 2025.
Parton's niece Lainey Mae Parton confirmed that she was laid to rest in a touching social media tribute.
“This is a really hard post for me to make,” she wrote on Instagram Aug. 29 alongside photos with Parton. “I wanted to wait until after my granny was laid to rest yesterday before I tried to put any of this into words.”
Shortly after her passing, Parton’s family shared in a statement that a “private service will be held for immediate family,” per the “Jolene” singer’s request, but they encouraged those who loved her to find other ways of honoring her memory.
In addition to her desire for a private funeral, Parton’s nephew Brian Seaver revealed the singer also had a special request for how she should be buried.
“Dolly was a farmer, just like her daddy,” Seaver said in a video shared to Parton’s Instagram Aug. 25. “He farmed the soil. She farmed songs and happiness. Dolly called me and said she wants to rest in a beautiful bed of plush cotton because after a life wearing heavy rhinestones, she finally deserves to be comfortable and have some rest.”
In the years before her death, Parton also reflected on the music she would like played at her memorial, confessing that her choice might come as a surprise: “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 Entertainment Weekly in 2014, quoting the lyrics, “Where the charming roses bloom forever and where separations come no more.”
“That was my daddy’s favorite,” she said. “We did sing it at his funeral, and I would like it to be sung at mine.”
And while Parton had “If We Never Meet Again” in mind for her own service, she also affectionately acknowledged another, more obvious choice: her 1973 song “I Will Always Love You."
“I’m sure they’ll be playing ‘I Will Always Love You’ when I die,” she noted, “just like they did with Whitney Houston.”
In fact, it was her experience at Houston’s funeral—following the icon's 2012 death due to drowning—that got Parton thinking about her own.
“When they picked her coffin up and started in on that song, I started to cry, and I thought, ‘Oh my Lord,’” she recalled. “That’s when it hit me that she was really gone.”
