Lisa Marie Presley’s memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, is filled with shocking revelations, but this one might be one of the most startling in the novel.
Elvis Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie, tragically passed last year at 54 years old after suffering full cardiac arrest. Before her passing, she was writing a personal memoir about her life, which was finished by her actress daughter Riley Keough. In the book, it’s details that Lisa Marie Presley was so heartbroken after the loss of her son, Benjamin, that she kept his body in her home for two months after his death.
Riley writes in the book at length about her brother’s struggles with mental health and how he’d often binge drink. Although Benjamin Keough took his life in 2020, Riley writes that she did not believe her brother wanted to die. She later recalls that she and her mother went through his phone after he passed, looking for any answer, and shares with readers the heartbreaking text she found.
“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. It’s heartbreaking to me that he only realized he might need help just two weeks before he killed himself.”
After his passing, Lisa Marie wrote that she was so heartbroken by his passing that she had to “fight” to stay alive for her other children, Riley and her twin daughters Harper and Finley Lockwood. To cope with her extreme heartbreak, Lisa Marie delayed saying her final goodbyes to her son after his passing.
“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. I found a very empathetic funeral home owner … She said, ‘We’ll bring Ben Ben to you.’
The funeral home director brought her son to their home, where Lisa Marie kept him in a 55-degree room to keep the body preserved. While Lisa Marie also notes in her book that she got comfortable caring for him and keeping them there, the delayed goodbye was only part of why she kept Benjamin in their home. She also struggled to decide if he should be buried in Hawaii or at Graceland, the Memphis estate where Elvis died and is buried.
“I think it would scare the living f**king piss out of anybody else to have their son there like that. But not me.”
While they had Benjamin at their home, Riley and Lisa Marie decided to honor him, getting a tattoo of his name on their body as he had tattoos of theirs on his. They called a tattoo artist to their home, and when they asked if they had images of Benjamin’s tattoos for reference so they could match the size and font, Riley recalled her mother replying:
“No, but I can show you.”
In the memoir, Riley took over the narrative, recalling that moment as a top five for things that have happened during her “absurd life.”
“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 day they got their tattoos, Riley recalls that the family felt it was time to end this and lay their brother/son to rest. Riley writes in the book that Lisa Marie even realized that it was time to hold a proper funeral for Benajamin and say their final goodbyes.
“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!”
The family held a funeral for Benajamin in Malibu, and he was buried at Graceland alongside Elvis, where Lisa Marie would later be laid to rest.
