Lisa Marie Presley. Picture: AFP
Lisa Marie Presley’s posthumous memoir reveals how she coped with her son Benjamin Keough’s tragic death in 2020.
In From Here to the Great Unknown, she shares that after Benjamin died by suicide at 27, she kept his body on dry ice for two months at her Los Angeles home.
She wrote, “My house has a separate casitas bedroom, and I kept Ben in there for two months. There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately,” according to NBC News.
She recounted how a compassionate funeral home owner supported her decision to keep her son at home, allowing her to spend time with him.
“I told her that having Ben in the house after he died was incredibly helpful because I could go and spend time with him and talk to him,” she wrote. The funeral home owner agreed to bring Benjamin to her, saying, “You can have him there.”
She acknowledged that this would likely frighten most people, saying, “I think it would scare the living f***ing p*ss out of anybody else to have their son there like that. But not me.”
Upon her January 2023 death, Lisa Marie left behind hours of recordings that her 35-year-old daughter Riley Keough adapted into the literary work published on Tuesday, reported MailOnline.
The memoir recounts a deeply emotional moment when Lisa Marie Presley and her daughter decided to get tattoos matching Benjamin’s, while his body rested in a cold room nearby, according to Sky News.
Keough wrote, “Lisa Marie had just asked this poor man to view her son’s body, which was right next to us in the casitas. I’ve experienced many surreal moments, but this one ranks in the top five.”
Lisa Marie shared the heartbreaking memory of discovering her father, Elvis Presley, after he passed away in 1977.
In the book Lisa Marie described the realisation that she would now be left with her mother, Priscilla Presley.
Elvis died of a heart attack at his Graceland home in Memphis, Tennessee, on 16 August 1977, when Lisa Marie was just nine years old.
For two days, Elvis Presley’s body lay in an open casket at Graceland. After the crowds had gone, Lisa Marie Presley would quietly return to “touch his face and hold his hand, to talk to him.”
“Even as an adult, there are nights when I just get drunk, listen to his music, and cry. The grief is still there. It never really goes away,” Lisa Maria said.
Keough believes her mother never fully came to terms with the loss.
Speaking to the BBC, she shared that, as a child, she felt anger toward her famous grandfather. She couldn’t help but associate his music with her mother’s pain, even so many years after his death.
NOW READ: Naomi Campbell blows money for charity on spas and cigarettes
Download our app and read this and other great stories on the move. Available for Android and iOS.
