Dolly Parton died this week at eighty.

I did the math because that’s the kind of thing I do now. Turned her eighty years into weeks, then turned my own age into what’s left if I get the same amount of time she had.

Four thousand two hundred and five weeks, she got.

I’ve got roughly nine hundred and twelve, if I’m lucky, if I’m average, if none of it moves.

So I wondered: what’s yours?

That’s not the part I keep thinking about.

The part I keep thinking about is that everybody remembers the heyday. The music, the movies, 9 to 5, the years when she seemed to be everywhere.

And then there are all the years after the center of the spotlight moved somewhere else.

She kept doing the work. Funding kids’ books and hospitals. Staying married to the same man. Living a life that didn’t seem to require performing being interesting for anyone.

I think that’s the part that actually made her interesting.

Not the spotlight years.

The years after, when nobody was grading her on it anymore.

I’m sitting in my own version of that right now.

Not the heyday, if I ever had one.

The after.

The part where the story isn’t being watched, so whatever gets built here just has to be built for its own sake.

Nine hundred and twelve weeks, give or take.

Life lived. Life left.

Somewhere in between.