When Lisa Marie Presley’s son, Benjamin Keough, died by suicide in 2020, she began living on borrowed time, according to her daughter Riley Keough.
In an exclusive prime-time interview with Oprah Winfrey on An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie, and Riley , which aired Tuesday, Riley shared her thoughts on her mother’s grief.
“I just couldn’t imagine a world where she would survive without him,” Riley said, reflecting on the final years she spent with her mother and how they both coped with Benjamin’s death while completing Lisa Marie’s posthumous memoir From Here to the Great Unknown .
“She used to say, ‘I’m going to die of a broken heart,’ and I think we all felt that,” Riley told Winfrey.
Lisa Marie Presley’s grief was so overwhelming that she kept her son Ben’s coffin in her home for nearly two months following his death. She worked closely with a funeral home to ensure his body was preserved using dry ice until it was time for burial.
“Everyone in the house was grieving,” Riley Keough said, noting that Lisa Marie found comfort in sitting beside Ben’s body during this period.
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Before Ben was laid to rest, Lisa Marie called in a tattoo artist, wanting to get a matching tattoo on her hand, just like Ben’s, in the same location.
“My mom was always very much herself,” Keough said. “She wasn’t some crazy lady.”
Keough recalled how Lisa Marie even took the tattoo artist to Ben’s coffin to show him where the tattoo was placed, ensuring it would be an exact match.
“The artist asked, ‘Do you have any photos?’ and she responded, ‘No, but I can show you.’”
