Lisa Marie Presley kept her beloved son Benjamin’s body in her home for months after his suicide, according to a new memoir finished by her actress daughter.
Lisa, who died last year aged 54, was revealed to have been so heartbroken by her loss that she kept her son in a ‘separate casitas bedroom’ for two months, shared in her memoir seen by Page Six.
‘There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately,’ she wrote. ‘I found a very empathetic funeral home owner … She said, “We’ll bring Ben Ben to you.”‘
Lisa reveals in the memoir, released today, that her son’s body was kept at 55 degrees to preserve the body, and that she ‘got used to’ caring for him in the room before he was laid to rest. Lisa would later be buried next to her son at Graceland.
Benjamin Keough died by suicide, aged 27, in August 2020 – an event that would inspire Lisa to write candidly on grief until her own passing three years later.
Lisa Marie Presley and Benjamin Presley Keough pictured together in 2015
Michael Lockwood (CL), Ben Keough (CR) and Lisa Marie Presley (R) attend the World Premiere of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows in London, on November 11, 2010
FROM HERE TO THE GREAT UNKNOWN is published by Pan MacMillan, out today
Lisa reportedly says in the book that she had to force herself to ‘fight’ to stay alive for her remaining children after Benjamin’s death, which made it difficult for her to say goodbye to her son immediately.
She said she knew that it was strange to keep the body in the house, writing: ‘I think it would scare the living f**king p*** out of anybody else to have their son there like that. But not me.’
She said she also found it hard to decide where to bury him – in Hawaii, or at the Graceland estate in Memphis where her father, Elvis Presley, died and is buried.
Riley Keough, who survives Lisa with her twin siblings Harper and Finley Lockwood, now 16, co-authored her mother’s memoir to ‘turn her into a three-dimensional human being’, she said.
‘I aim not only to honor my mother, but to tell a human story in what I know is an extraordinary circumstance,’ she explained on Saturday while recording an audio version of the book.
‘I am aware that the recordings my mother left are a gift. So often, all that’s left of a loved one is a saved and re-saved voicemail, a short video on a phone, some favorite photos. I take the privilege of these tapes very seriously.’
Riley and her mother honored Benjamin by getting tattoos that matched his.
As he had his sister’s name on his collarbone and his mother’s on his hand, Riley had her brother’s on her collar and Lisa had her son’s on her hand.
When the tattoo artist asked for photos of Benjamin to match up the tattoos, Lisa said, ‘No, but I can show you’, according to Page Six.
‘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…’ Riley writes.
‘I’ve had an extremely absurd life, but this moment is in the top five.’
Riley writes that soon after, everyone ‘got the vibe’ that it was time for Benjamin to be buried.
A funeral was held in Malibu before Benjamin was buried in Graceland. Lisa would join her son after her death, buried in a shared plot to the right.
Lisa Marie died at age of 54 of a small-bowel obstruction that developed after she underwent bariatric surgery several years prior.
Shortly before her death, Presley asked Keough, whose father is Danny Keough, to assist her with the writing of the memoir in 2022.
Riley will also narrate part of the audiobook along with movie star Julia Roberts.
Riley Keough, Priscilla Presley Lisa Marie and Benjamin Keough pictured for celebrations of what would have been Elvis’ 75th birthday, near Graceland, January 8 2010
Riley Keough shared a photo of the last occasion she saw her mother before her death in 2023
Elvis Presley with his wife Priscilla (R) and his daughter Lisa Marie Elvis Presley (L)
In the memoir, Lisa Marie covers her love for Elvis and how much she struggled after his death, her romantic relationships, motherhood, the devastating death of her son in 2020 and the birth of her granddaughter, Keough’s two-year-old daughter Tupelo.
‘What she wanted to do in her memoir, and what I hope I’ve done in finishing it for her, is to go beneath the magazine headline idea of her and reveal the core of who she was,’ Keough said when talking to PEOPLE in September.
Keough is set to hit the road for a fall book tour for in honor of her mother’s posthumous memoir.
According to Random House, she will be joined by a special guest in six different cities, which includes: New York, Memphis, St Louis, Nashville, London and Los Angeles, that goes from October 9 and 20.
The highly-anticipated memoir, FROM HERE TO THE GREAT UNKNOWN, is published by Pan MacMillan, out today, October 8, 2024.
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