In the wake of Lisa Marie Presley’s sudden passing in January 2023, her daughter Riley Keough has given the world an unprecedented glimpse into the Presley family’s darkest moments. Through the posthumous release of Lisa Marie’s memoir, “From Here to the Great Unknown,” the depths of the family’s unimaginable grief have been laid bare for all to see.
Perhaps the most gut-wrenching revelation in the book is the heartbreaking story behind Lisa Marie’s decision to get a matching tattoo with her late son, Benjamin Keough. The 27-year-old’s tragic suicide in 2020 devastated the Presley clan, and as Riley tells it, the loss was almost too much for her mother to bear.
“I just couldn’t imagine a world where she would make it without him,” Riley solemnly told Oprah Winfrey in a recent primetime special. “She would say, ‘I’m going to die of a broken heart,’ and I think we felt that.”
In a move that some may deem unorthodox, Lisa Marie chose to keep Benjamin’s body at her home for nearly two months after his passing, preserving it on dry ice so that she could have “ample time to say goodbye to him, the same way she’d done with her dad,” the iconic Elvis Presley.
However, Lisa Marie brought in a tattoo artist to immortalize her bond with her son, which genuinely stunned readers. According to Riley, her mother wanted to get a tattoo that matched the one Benjamin had on his hand, and she went to extraordinary lengths to ensure the placement was perfect.
“‘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,'” Riley recounts in the book. “‘I’ve had an extremely absurd life, but this moment is in the top five.'”
The tattoo artist, understandably taken aback by the request, dutifully studied the placement of Benjamin’s tattoo before replicating it on Lisa Marie’s hand. Riley admits that while the situation may seem “completely insane and absurd” on paper, it was simply the manifestation of her mother’s all-consuming grief.
“‘If my mom were here, she’d be like, ‘Yeah, whatever. I don’t care. If people think that’s crazy, they can go f— themselves,'” Riley told People magazine.
The book also delves into the depth of the connection Lisa Marie felt with her son, describing him as being “so much like [Elvis] it scared me.” In one heartbreaking passage, she writes, “Ben was very similar to his grandfather, very, very, very, and in every way. He even looked like him. Ben was so much like him, it scared me.”
Tragically, Benjamin’s struggles with addiction and mental health issues mirrored those of his famous grandfather, a reality that Lisa Marie found both profound and terrifying. “Ben didn’t stand a f-–ing chance,” she laments in the memoir.
As Riley has noted, her mother’s unwavering love for her children was the one constant in the Presley family’s tumultuous history. “The love was always there, you know?” she told Winfrey. “She did things – we had fights. She did things that I, you know, disapproved of. We’d have awful interactions, as you do with someone on drugs. But … the love was always there.”
Perhaps that fierce maternal bond is best exemplified by Lisa Marie’s determination to honor Benjamin’s memory, even in the depths of her unimaginable grief. The tattoo, a permanent testament to their connection, is a poignant reminder of the profound love between a mother and child – a love that not even death can extinguish.
As Riley assumes the mantle of preserving the Presley legacy, she has vowed to continue running the iconic Graceland estate in a way that would make her mother proud. “I think my instinct with everything is always to do what my mother would have wanted, which is to keep it home. It was our family’s home,” she told Winfrey.
In the end, Lisa Marie’s memoir’s revelations serve as a window into the Presley clan’s private struggles and a testament to the enduring power of familial love. A glimmer of light shines through the darkness—a reminder that even in the face of unimaginable tragedy, the bonds that tie us together can never truly be broken.