Dolly Parton's sudden passing at 80 has left fans devastated, but the country legend made sure her story wasn't quite over. Back in 2015, the same year she opened Dollywood's DreamMore Resort in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, Parton secretly wrote and recorded a song titled "My Place In History." The track has been sitting on a CD inside a chestnut "Dream Box," locked away and displayed in a glass case, and it also holds a piece of wood taken from the porch of her childhood home in Sevierville, where she grew up singing with her eleven siblings.
Per her own instructions, the box will remain sealed until the year 2046 — the year Dolly would have turned 100. In her 2020 memoir, she admitted she wasn't sure she wanted to live that long, but joked that if she did, she'd be there in person for the reveal. She even joked that there was no telling what music would sound like by then, and hoped the recording itself wouldn't have "rotted."
Dolly's death came after a brief, private battle with cancer, according to a statement from her representatives, who confirmed she passed away at Nashville's Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, surrounded by loved ones. Her team also highlighted her extraordinary generosity, from the hundreds of millions of books donated through her Imagination Library to funding research behind a lifesaving vaccine.
Now, two decades from today, the world will finally hear Dolly Parton's very last goodbye.