Bleps4Leo

In 2020 I worked a job collecting medical record for insurance companies. It was Covid and there were many, many medical offices that were grieving and angry. It wasn't a fun job most of the time.

But one day I called a hospital in Tennessee. I was supposed to collect records for a NICU patient and their mama. I got to records and the woman in charge of records said there must be a mistake. They never worked with insurance with maternity or neonatal patients because of Dolly.

I asked what she meant and she told me, "Well, Miss Dolly has us send her the bills for any new mothers and their babies, especially if they spend time in the NICU. She never has anyone apply or anything, she just has us send her any bill for those families and she pays them, no matter how big."

I was stunned. I clarified, "Dolly? Dolly Parton?"

"Yes, ma'am! Dolly's been paying those bills since at least 1999 and so we just don't work with insurance here. It's why there's a mural of her in the maternity ward."

I cried harder that day than any other day during the height if the pandemic. For the first time that year it wasn't grief fueling my tears, it was a hope so deep that it hurt to contain it. When Dolly gave a million dollars for vaccine development I just nodded. Made sense to me. That's simply who she was. She saw a need and, if it was in her power, she met it. She loved humanity in a way that didn't require anything back. It was never a question of whether or not it was her responsibility, she just stepped forward and did what needed doing.

I loved Dolly Parton in the same way I loved Mr Rogers. Steve Irwin. Bob Ross. She shaped who I am with her kindness and she was a core part of my world for my entire life.

Amid all the challenges and tragedies she stayed just as kind, creative, strong, generous, tenderhearted, funny and playful as ever. What a powerful example she set.

She never stopped being a rhinestone bombshell because that's what she wanted to be. It was never time for her to stop being camp, or glam, and start being just little old Aunt Granny all the time. She wrote her songs, cracked her jokes and she valued herself and her work and her joy so immensely.

What an inspiration. You don't have to anticipate melting into nothingness when you hit 60. You don't have to believe you'll become bitter, narrowminded, and meanspirited just because it seems like so many older people do. You don't have to give up all the things that nurture and feed your spark because it's time to... what? Be a little old lady?

Hell no.

"A rhinestone shines just as good as a diamond.”