Lisa Marie Presley’s memoir “From Here to the Great Unknown” reveals heartbreaking details about the loss of her son Benjamin, who died by suicide in 2020 at just 27 years old.
Presley passed away from a small bowel obstruction in January 2023 and her daughter Riley Keough completed her book after she died.
The book explains that Lisa Marie kept Benjamin’s body at her home for two months after he died.
Riley wrote, “My mom had my brother in the house with us instead of keeping him at the morgue. They told us that if we could tend to the body, we could have him at home, so she kept him in our house for a while on dry ice. It was really important for my mom to have ample time to say goodbye to him, the same way she’d done with her dad. And I would go and sit in there with him.”
Lisa Marie then writes, “My house has a separate casitas bedroom, and I kept Ben Ben in there for two for two months. There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately.”
She added, “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.”
Lisa Marie “got so used to him, caring for him and keeping him there,” noting the room was kept at 55 degrees to preserve his body.
She also confessed, “I think it would scare the living f**king piss out of anybody else to have their son there like that. But not me.”
Following his death Lisa Marie and Riley decided to get tattoos in his honor. He had Riley’s name tattooed on his collarbone, so Riley got his name tattooed on hers. He had his mother’s name on his hand, so Presley got his name on her hand.
When the tattoo artist came over and asked if there were photos of Ben’s tattoos so he could match them, Lisa Marie told him, “No, but I can show you.”
Riley then wrote, “Lisa Marie Presley had just asked this poor man to look at the body of her dead son, which happened to be right next to us in the casitas. I’ve had an extremely absurd life, but this moment is in the top five.”
After the tattoos, they felt it was time to lay him to rest.
Riley wrote, “Even my mom said that she could feel him talking to her, saying ‘This is insane, Mom, what are you doing? What the f**k!’”
Deepak Chopra led the funeral service in Malibu, and Benjamin was laid to rest at Graceland with his grandfather Elvis Presley. Lisa Marie was later buried alongside them.
Riley wrote about Benjamin’s mental health struggles and an old text they found in his phone after he died.
“We found a text sent to my mom a couple of weeks before he died that read, ‘I think something’s wrong with me mentally or something like that. I think I have a mental health issue,'” Riley wrote. “It’s heartbreaking to me that he only realized he might need help just two weeks before he killed himself.”
“From Here to the Great Unknown” is available now.
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