I Will Not Say Goodbye

"I Will Not Say Goodbye" was written by Lari White with her husband Chuck Cannon and their friend Vicky McGehee. In December 2015, White explained the song was inspired by the death of a 14-year-old boy, the son of a close friend. Danny Gokey's record label contacted White and asked if he could record a song. She learned later that his wife Sophia had died in 2008, so it was doubly poignant. Sadly it would become triply so, because while Gokey remarried in 2012, Lari White died in January 2018 aged only 52 from a sudden onset of a particularly aggressive form of cancer.

Saying goodbye is typically part of the grieving process after losing a loved one, but in this song, Gokey rejects the idea, as he's not looking for closure. I don't wanna feel better I don't wanna not remember He'd rather live with the memory, even through the pain.

Gokey dedicated this song to Sophia. "That song just totally represents what I felt when my wife passed away," he told the Maryland newspaper the Frederick News-Post.