Lisa Marie Presley’s memoir reveals she kept son Benjamin’s body on dry ice

• Lisa Marie Presley’s posthumous memoir reveals that she kept her son’s body on dry ice after his death.
• Benjamin Keough committed suicide in July 2020.
• According to the memo, the body lay at Presley’s home for two months before his funeral at Graceland.

Lisa Marie Presley has opened up about how she coped with the death of her son Benjamin Keough in her newly released posthumous memoir.

Presley, who died at age 54 in 2023, detailed the heartbreak in “From Here to the Great Unknown,” released Tuesday and co-written by her daughter Riley Keough.

Riley wrote that before Benjamin’s death by suicide at age 27, he suffered from depression and alcoholism, which intensified as Presley’s health declined.

“Ben Ben was a mama’s boy through and through and he couldn’t bear his mother’s pain. They were so close — like Elvis and Gladys — inextricably linked to each other’s rise and fall, and seeing each other in pain was impossibly hard for them,” Riley wrote, referring to their grandfather Elvis Presley and mother yes, Gladys Presley. – He destroyed it.

After Benjamin’s death on July 12, 2020, Riley said she struggled with grief and was “more physically disabled than my parents.”

In the memoir, Riley said Benjamin was an alcoholic, but she spent a lot of time with him sober. However, Presley’s addiction to opioids — which Presley wrote “had risen to 80 pills a day” at one point — “meant that he just wasn’t there emotionally a lot of the time ” for her son, according to Riley.

Riley said she assumed Presley would relapse within hours of Benjamin’s death. To her surprise, her mother “stayed completely awake to honor him.”

Instead of having a funeral and burial soon after, Presley kept her son’s body in her home on dry ice for two months while she processed her grief.

“It was very important for my mother to have enough time to say goodbye to him, just as she had done with her father,” Riley wrote. “And I would go and sit there with him.”

Presley wrote that she “found a very empathetic funeral home owner” who granted her request. The body was kept in a room that was set at 55 degrees to avoid deterioration, and Presley said the death rites took a long time because she was torn between burying him in Hawaii or Graceland.

“I’m so used to him, taking care of him and keeping him there,” she wrote. “I think it would scare anyone else to have their son there like that. But not me.”

Benjamin’s funeral was held in Malibu and he was buried in Graceland next to his famous grandfather.

“I felt so lucky that there was a way I could parent him, to hold off a little longer so I could agree to lay him to rest,” Presley wrote in her memoir.

Riley said Benjamin and Presley “shared a very deep soul connection” and she knew her mother wouldn’t survive long without him.

“He didn’t want to be here,” Riley wrote.

Presley herself wrote in chapter eight that she regularly fought against her persistent pain and tried to remember that she still had three children alive: Riley and twin daughters Finley Aaron Love and Harper Vivienne Anne.

“I’m surprised I’m still alive,” Presley said. “I can’t believe I’m still standing. It’s wrong to be alive without Ben.”

In an essay published by People magazine in August 2022, months before her death, Presley said she blamed herself “every day” for Benjamin’s death.

Presley’s health continued to deteriorate and she died in January 2023, aged 54. The cause of death was a small bowel obstruction from a previous surgery. She was buried in Graceland, next to Benjamin and across from Elvis.