If We Never Meet Again This Side of Heaven

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If We Never Meet Again (This Side of Heaven)
Written by Albert E. Brumley, published 1945

Albert E. Brumley grew up in the cotton fields near Spiro, Oklahoma, the son of sharecroppers, and went on to write more than 800 songs — among them “I’ll Fly Away,” “Turn Your Radio On,” “I’ll Meet You in the Morning,” and “Rank Stranger.” He arrived nearly penniless at the Hartford Music Institute in Arkansas at age twenty, was taken in by its founder E. M. Bartlett, and years later bought the company outright. He spent most of his life in Powell, Missouri, raising six children with his wife Goldie.

According to his granddaughter Betsy Brumley, this song began on a car ride. Her grandfather did much of his writing behind the wheel — if he needed an idea, he’d go for a drive. Coming home from one of the great all-day singing conventions in Memphis, it struck him that the group he had just left would never be together in quite that way again. Even if they all came back next year, someone would be missing. That thought became the song: a promise to meet on the other side, since we can’t count on meeting again here.

Brumley lived to see his songs recorded by the biggest names in American music, and one recording meant more than most. Elvis Presley’s mother, Gladys, loved this hymn above all others. When she died in 1958, Elvis asked the Brumley family to come to her funeral because of it. Elvis recorded the song himself in 1960 for his gospel album His Hand in Mine. Johnny Cash and Porter Wagoner recorded it too, and it’s been sung in country churches for eighty years.

Dolly Parton loved Brumley’s work all her life — when she built the little chapel at Dollywood, his songbook was reportedly the only one she allowed inside. In a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly, she named this song as the one she wanted at her own funeral. It had been her father Robert Lee Parton’s favorite, and the family had sung it at his service. “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.” Dolly never recorded it, though she sang it on television more than once. She died on August 25, 2026, at eighty.

It was never a chart hit and never meant to be. It has simply stayed in use — at gravesides, at family reunions, at the end of long singings, wherever people part without knowing whether they’ll gather again.