In her new posthumous memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie Presley recounted the heartbreaking moment she found dad Elvis Presley dead.
Sharing the 1977 experience in the book, which was completed by her 35-year-old daughter Riley Keough, she described realizing that she was now ‘stuck’ with mom Priscilla Presley.
Elvis succumbed to a heart attack at his Graceland estate in Memphis, Tennessee on August 16, 1977, when his firstborn child was just nine-years-old.
When her father was buried, she wrote, ‘That was the first time I really felt the loss — obviously from my dad passing away, but more than anything, I felt I was stuck with this woman,’ she wrote in reference to her mother, now 79.
‘It was a one-two punch. He’s dead and now I’m stuck with her,’ she added.
Upon her January 2023 death, Lisa Marie left behind hours of recordings that Riley adapted into the literary work, which was published on Tuesday.
In her new posthumous memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie Presley recounted the heartbreaking moment she found dad Elvis Presley dead; the late star pictured in January 2023
Sharing the 1977 experience in the book, which was completed by her 35-year-old daughter Riley Keough, she described realizing that she was now ‘stuck’ with mom Priscilla Presley; Lisa Marie and her parents pictured in 1970
Lisa Marie, Elvis and Priscilla’s only child together, remembered feeling something was awry on the morning her dad died.
She ran to her father’s room, where she was stopped by the performer’s road manager and friend Joe Esposito.
‘Your daddy’s sick,’ he told her before she ran into his bathroom, where an unresponsive Elvis was lying on the floor.
‘I tried to run to him, but somebody grabbed me and pulled me back,’ she wrote.
Presley was 42-years-old and had been a longtime opiate user.
The mother-of-four, who in addition to Riley birthed son Benjamin and twin daughters Finley and Harper, wrote: ‘There were so many times that I found him down on the floor or unable to control his body very well. It was the barbiturates.’
Describing the harrowing scene on her dad’s final morning, she penned, ‘They were standing over him, moving him around and trying to work on him.
‘I was screaming bloody murder. I knew it was not good. Then I got taken out of the room.’
Upon her January 2023 death, Lisa Marie left behind hours of recordings that Riley adapted into the literary work, which was published on Tuesday
Paramedics tried to revive him and, she wrote, ‘I started screaming that I wanted him, that I needed him, and I started kicking and punching whoever was holding me back, trying to get away from them, but they wouldn’t let me go.’
She confessed she was glad not to see his face, believing it would have traumatized her more.
Lisa Marie smoked a cigarette with Presley’s girlfriend Ginger Alden’s niece.
And then her grandfather Vernon Presley wailed, ‘Your daddy’s gone, he’s gone! My son is gone!’
Elvis and Priscilla admiring their newborn daughter in February 1968
Riley shared a close bond with her mother; pictured in June 2022
Left with one parent, Lisa Marie would go on to have a tumultuous relationship with her mother.
And she confessed to prompting Priscilla to send her to multiple schools and turn to the Church of Scientology as her behavior was unruly.
While she was alive, Riley observed that mother never ‘processed the loss’ of Elvis.
‘I certainly knew that she was heartbroken my whole life. I remember when I was little feeling angry at Elvis for leaving my mother and for causing all this pain,’ the actress wrote.
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