"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 particular 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.

Wes Edwards directed the video, which breaks up the song with instrumental passages where we hear real people telling their stories about coping with loss. The people are never identified, but they include a woman with two kids whose husband was killed in military service and a police officer who lost his partner in the line of duty.

My Best Days was Gokey's debut album. He was coming off a third-place finish on American Idol and too busy to write songs for the set, which is why his label went hunting for material for him.