Following the loss of life of Lisa Marie Presley‘s son Benjamin Keough by suicide in 2020, the singer and solely youngster of Elvis Presley struggled to course of her son’s loss of life.
“I simply couldn’t think about a world the place she would make it with out him,” Presley’s granddaughter Riley Keough informed Oprah Winfrey throughout a CBS particular, The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley, on Tuesday.
Keough opened up about her mom’s posthumous memoir, From Right here to the Nice Unknown, which she co-wrote, and her household’s time at Graceland in Memphis, the place Lisa Marie stayed for a part of her childhood. Following her brother’s loss of life, Keough stated that her mom would say, “I’m going to die of a damaged coronary heart.”
Throughout the interview, Winfrey recalled Lisa Marie telling her that she didn’t know if she might proceed after her son’s suicide. “I knew this was the tip of her. ?” Keough stated. “I feel I felt grateful, as a result of I felt like I used to be on borrowed time.”
Winfrey additionally requested Keough to learn a passage from the memoir, through which her mom wrote: “Ben was similar to his grandfather, very, very, very, and in each manner. He even appeared like him. Ben was a lot like him, it scared me. I didn’t wish to inform him as a result of I believed it was an excessive amount of to placed on a child. We had been very shut. He’d inform me the whole lot. Ben and I had the identical relationship that my father and his mom had. It was a generational fucking cycle. Gladys beloved my dad a lot that she drank herself to loss of life worrying about him. Ben didn’t stand a fucking likelihood.”
Keough stated that within the ebook, Lisa Marie defined why she determined to protect her late son’s physique on dry ice at her Los Angeles mansion for 2 months till it was prepared for burial.
“I feel that the plan was to bury him right here together with her dad, and we weren’t going to come back [to Graceland] for about three weeks,” stated Keough, who added that her brother could be saved on the funeral dwelling throughout that point. “I feel she simply didn’t like the concept he was distant,” the actress stated in reference to Lisa Marie. “She didn’t know what was being executed, and I feel that she simply needed management over the scenario given our household … and in addition simply being a mom.”
Keough stated that Lisa Marie felt comforted when she sat by her brother’s physique. The Daisy Jones & the Six star additionally shared that in her mom’s grieving course of, Lisa Marie expressed her want to get an identical tattoo together with her son on her hand — the identical place the place he had his tattoo.
“I feel that the story might, on paper, I can see how this sounds utterly insane and absurd. However I — my mother was simply very a lot herself,” Keough stated. “She wasn’t a loopy woman.”
Keough stated that her mom invited a tattoo artist to view Benjamin’s physique so as to get the location proper. “[The tattoo artist], God bless him, was very regular about the entire thing,” Keough stated. “It positively some of the, like, absurd moments.”
When the artist left, Keough stated she informed her mom, “Are you aware how fucking loopy that was, what you simply did?”
Lisa Marie died on Jan. 12, 2023, after struggling cardiac arrest at her dwelling in Calabasas, California. She was buried at Graceland subsequent to Benjamin. A number of months earlier than she was laid to relaxation, Lisa Marie wrote a candid essay for Individuals about feeling “destroyed” after her son’s loss of life.
“Dying is a part of life whether or not we prefer it or not — and so is grieving. There’s a lot to study and perceive on the topic, however right here’s what I do know to this point: One is that grief doesn’t cease or go away in any sense, a 12 months, or years after the loss,” Presley wrote. “Grief is one thing you’ll have to carry with you for the remainder of your life, regardless of what sure folks or our tradition desires us to consider.”