Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of the legendary Elvis Presley, faced immense grief after the tragic suicide of her son, Benjamin Keough, in 2020. In a deeply emotional interview with Oprah Winfrey on CBS’s special The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie, and Riley, Riley Keough, Lisa Marie’s daughter, revealed her mother’s heartbreaking struggle. Lisa Marie, unable to cope with Benjamin’s sudden death, reportedly kept his body in dry ice for two months at her Los Angeles home before finally preparing for his funeral.
Keough shared intimate details about how Lisa Marie’s grief over Benjamin’s death was deeply rooted in their close bond. In her memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie wrote that Benjamin reminded her of Elvis, describing them as eerily similar. “Ben was so much like his grandfather it scared me,” she said. “We had the same connection that my father had with his mother. It was a generational cycle.”
Lisa Marie reportedly chose to preserve Benjamin’s body due to the delay in his burial at Graceland, explaining she didn’t want him far away and sought to maintain control over the situation. “She was just being a mom,” Riley Keough added, recalling her mother’s intense sorrow. During this time, Lisa Marie even got a matching tattoo on her hand to honor her son.
Months before her death, Lisa Marie openly discussed her grief in an essay for People, reflecting on the enduring pain of losing a child. “The pain doesn’t stop or go away, even years later,” she wrote. “You carry it with you forever.”
This tragic chapter of the Presley family history shines a light on the deep emotional trauma they’ve faced, revealing how generational grief has shaped their lives.