“My mother was asleep in her hotel room,” Riley, 35, wrote in new book, From Here to the Great Unknown , released on Tuesday, October 8. “I ran to her suite and started banging on the door.”
The book, which is primarily Lisa Marie’s memoir, was cowritten by Riley — who finished it following her mother’s 2023 death at age 54. Two separate fonts were included within the text to differentiate who was writing. Riley’s point of view is featured primarily on the day her brother died.
Riley wrote about receiving a call at 5:30 a.m. on July 12, 2020. The actress immediately knew that something “serious” had happened, assuming it was a call about her mother. However, Lisa Marie’s assistant told Riley that 27-year-old Benjamin had died by suicide.
“I already knew, clear as day, in those moments banging on her door, that any time I got with her after what was about to happen would be a gift,” Riley wrote. “I couldn’t imagine her living without my brother.”
Benjamin was throwing a party at Lisa Marie’s Calabasas house when he “went upstairs” at 3:30 a.m. “He said he was just going to get a beer,” Riley wrote, noting that “it took almost an hour” for partygoers to realize that Benjamin had gone missing. (Lisa Marie was staying in a hotel because there was mold in the home.)
After telling Lisa Marie and her father, Danny Keough , about her brother’s passing, Riley accompanied her mom to their house.
“What did you do Benjamin?” Riley recalled Lisa Marie asking when they saw his body for the first time. The Daisy Jones & The Six star wrote that she was “in shock” — a state she stayed in for two weeks. The book also revealed that Lisa Marie kept Benjamin’s body in the house for two months — “we had to keep the room at 55 degrees — before burying him at Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee.
Riley wrote that her mom’s “health was deteriorating” in the years that followed Benjamin’s death.
“Despite all this love she still had inside her, and all of her effort to life, we could all see it,” Riley wrote. “We all knew my mom was going to die of a broken heart.”
Riley was filming a show in Canada when she got the call from her dad on January 12, 2023, that Lisa Marie had gone into cardiac arrest . The actress jumped on a plane to Los Angeles.
“I felt like my mother was between two worlds,” Riley wrote, noting that she tried to speak to her mom’s “spirit” letting her know that it was OK to “go.”
Riley recalled her father’s texts getting scarcer — and she knew.
“She passed a few minutes ago, honey. Didn’t want to tell you by text. But I’m worried it’s going to hit the papers,” Riley recalled her dad’s message reading. “I love you so much I’m really sorry to tell you like this. I don’t want you to be blindsided when you get off the plane.”
Such heartbreak for Lisa and every aspect of her life under the microscope from the day of her birth. I hope she is finally at peace and with her son and father again.
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