Michael Landon Wrote a Touching Little House on the Prairie Line that Melissa Gilbert Later Said at His Funeral

One of Landon’s go-to lines of dialogue was later used to remember the actor himself

The Little House on the Prairie cast is reflecting on the full-circle nature of the late Michael Landon’s most oft-quoted line of dialogue.

On the May 29, 2025, episode of the Little House 50 podcast, co-hosts Pamela Bob, Alison Arngrim and Dean Butler spoke about an episode in the show’s second season titled “Remember Me,” which centered on a widow diagnosed with incurable cancer who must determine what will happen to her three young children.

The episode was written and directed by Landon, who also played patriarch Charles Ingalls on the show, and it was an emotional re-watch for the show’s former stars.

“I think this there are elements of this episode that are so quintessentially Michael and his whole take on so many different things,” said Butler, 69. “One of his most quoted lines of dialogue, which interestingly is generally quoted to Laura Ingalls Wilder — was, ‘Remember me with smiles and laughter for that is how I will remember you.’ ”

While the line is often attributed to Wilder, it was Landon himself who wrote it — and in a strange twist, those same words would one day be used to honor him, following his death from pancreatic cancer in 1991.

Butler continued: “The beautiful actress Patricia N eal said the line in the episode. And interestingly, Melissa Gilbert quoted the line at Michael’s funeral service in July of 1991, as part of her remarks, which were some of the most beautiful remarks I’d ever heard. Melissa, who’s incredibly articulate, was really, really spectacular in in that situation.”

The full-circle moment of the line of dialogue being used in Landon’s memorial, said Butler, meant that the words “became a signature in Michael’s life.”

Arngrim, 63, added that she still can’t watch the episode without growing emotional.

“I can’t even hear those words without kind of choking up because it was so Michael,” she said on the podcast, adding, “It’s heart-wrenching in this episode, but then when it became literally Michael’s epitaph … it was like, just plunge knife at the chest.”

Arngrim added that the episode itself offered almost a foretelling of Landon’s life.

“It’s an incredible thing, that he wrote that and that was so much who he was [and] the idea that this would mirror his life in such a way,” she said.

While the episode revolves around a woman grappling with how to tell her children she’s dying, Landon himself had to do the same later in life.

“By the time he found out he had pancreatic cancer, he did not have very long to live,” Arngrim said, noting that Landon was diagnosed in April, spoke about his diagnosis on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in May, and died in July.