This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Lisa Marie Presley took many staggering secrets to the grave when she died in January 2023 from a small bowel obstruction, but not before penning them to paper.
Writing a memoir before her death, “From Here to the Great Unknown” examines the hardships that Elvis Presley’s only child saw in her 54 years of life. Posthumously completed by her eldest child, actress Riley Keough, the book includes shocking details about the death of her son, Benjamin Keough.
He died by suicide in 2020.
LISA MARIE PRESLEY’S SON BENJAMIN KEOUGH LAID TO REST AT ELVIS PRESLEY’S GRACELAND
Benjamin Keough attends the world premiere of “Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 1” in London with his mother, Lisa Marie Presley, and step-father, Michael Lockwood, left. (Dave M. Benett/Getty Images)
“My house has a separate casitas bedroom and I kept Ben Ben in there for two months,” Presley wrote.
“There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately. I found a very empathetic funeral home owner. I told her that having my dad in the house after he died was incredibly helpful because I could go and spend time with him and talk to him. She said, ‘We’ll bring Ben Ben to you. You can have him there.'”
Presley was only 9 years old when her father passed away.
Elvis Presley’s only child was Lisa Marie Presley. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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The room was kept a cool 55 degrees for Benjamin.
Keough wrote earlier that her brother was “on dry ice.”
Presley was struggling with where to bury her son – Hawaii or Graceland – which ultimately postponed the inevitable.
“My house has a separate casitas bedroom and I kept Ben Ben in there for two months. There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately.”
Lisa Marie Presley smiles with her four children, Riley and Benjamin Keough and Finley Aaron Love and Harper Vivienne Ann Lockwood. (Lisa Marie Presley Instagram)
“But I got so used to him, caring for him and keeping him there. I think it would scare the living f—ing piss out of anybody else to have their son there like that. But not me,” she wrote.
Presley wrote that so often, the grieving process is rushed. “I felt so fortunate that there was a way that I could still parent him, delay it a bit longer so that I could become okay with laying him to rest.”
During all of this, Keough wrote that she and her mother decided to get tattoos of their brother’s name, similarly to how he had tattooed theirs on his body.
Lisa Marie Presley, center, poses with her mother, Priscilla, left, and daughter, Riley, in a photograph from 2015. (Eric Charbonneau/Getty Images for Warner Bros.)
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“We met with the artist in the little courtyard next to the casitas, and during the meeting my mom became adamant that she wanted her tattoo exactly where my brother had his. The artist said it was possible, but that he’d need to know the font, the positioning. ‘Do you happen to have any photos,'” she remembered him asking.
“‘No…but I can show you,'” her mother responded.
“I looked at my mom, and with my eyes only communicated, ‘Are you out of your f—ing mind. You’ve never met this guy before. Do not bring him into that room with my dead brother.'”
Lisa Marie Presley kept her son’s body in her home for two months after his death. (CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images)
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However, Presley did, even picking up her son’s lifeless hand to show the tattoo artist exactly how she wanted her own.
“I’ve had an extremely absurd life, but this moment is in the top five,” Keough wrote.
“Soon after that, we all kind of got this vibe from my brother that he didn’t want his body in this house anymore. ‘Guys’ he seemed to be saying, ‘this is getting weird.’ Even my mom said that she could feel him talking to her saying, ‘This is insane, Mom, what are you doing? What the f—!’”
Shortly after, he was buried at Graceland, next to his famous grandfather.