Riley Keough sat down with Oprah Winfrey at her family’s Graceland mansion for a one-hour CBS special to discuss her new book, From Here to the Great Unknown. Keogh wrote the book after his mother had previously begun dictating her memories for her memoirs. Among the revelations revealed Tuesday at the book launch and prime-time event were how deep grief Lisa Marie Presley spent the last two years of her life, even though she seemed to have overcome her drug addiction. It became clear that he had fallen into a Even if her health was compromised.
Among the most talked about stories already in this book, and discussed in detail in “The Oprah Special: The Presley Family – Elvis, Lisa Marie, Riley,” is that Lisa Marie Presley literally I didn’t want to let go of it. My beloved son Ben passed away by suicide in 2020.
As recounted in the feature, Lisa Marie kept Ben’s body for two months after his death, unable to decide whether to bury him at Graceland or in Hawaii, but she kept it in her house. She also felt that having Ben’s presence would help her process her grief better. Even if you die, for a long time.
“I could see how insane and absurd this sounded on paper,” Keogh said. “But my mother was just who she was…You know, she wasn’t a crazy woman.” It’s similar to what it is compared to. On the other hand, I admitted that it seems strange to think about death through someone else’s eyes…I had the opportunity to do so when visitors came to the hospital. house.
“It’s been about two months now and everyone in the house is grieving,” Keogh told Winfrey. “She pulled off an outrageous thing, but I think the plan was to bury him here (at Graceland) with his father. And we’ll be here for about three weeks,” Keogh said. She didn’t mean to… She knew that the woman was going to keep my brother at the funeral home, and she didn’t like the idea of him being away. And I think given our family and everything and just being a mother, she just wanted to be in control of the situation. …Basically, she found a very caring funeral home owner who was her mother, and she said, “Well, look,” if you do all these things, she’ll put him in a room. can be confined. You just need someone to take care of you. ” (In the book, Keogh details the need to maintain room temperature at 55 degrees.)
Winfrey urged Keogh to tell the story of how she brought in a tattoo artist to have her name inscribed on her hand to reflect Ben’s tattoo. Lisa Marie said, “I really wanted to get it exactly right, and he said, ‘Okay, do you have a picture?'” …and she said, “No.” But I’ll show you,” she said, leading him to the body in the next room. “I kept quiet because this is my mom and moms do what they want, but it was definitely one of the most absurd moments, (yet) it was all very factual. …God bless him, he was so normal about everything…and when he left, I thought, ‘I know how crazy that was. What happened to his family when he got home that night? Keogh said, “He’ll write a book someday.”
Both the host and the subject had to smile momentarily as the strange story was told, but the subject of Lisa Marie’s extreme sadness was treated with the utmost seriousness, and it was revealed that she did not want to die. A tape recording of his final months was played. Even after Ben dies, he “literally” continues to live on. Riley said she had a close relationship with her mother, but said the bond between her brother and Lisa Marie was similar to the legendary bond between Elvis Presley and his mother, Gladys.
As a new book reveals, Lisa Marie didn’t have a serious drug problem from her teenage years until she gave birth to twins at age 40, when she fell into a debilitating opiate addiction. Ingested drugs after caesarean section. Mr Keogh said his mother was proud of Lisa Marie, who managed to go through rehabilitation more than 10 years later and did not have a serious relapse after Ben’s death. However, in her final years, continued grief and failure to take care of her own body created an eerie situation in which the daughter felt that her mother might not live long.
“There were several times during the last three weeks of her life when I was with her that I felt uneasy,” Mr Keogh said. “I think there’s always been some kind of underlying feeling that I’m spending time with her on borrowed time,” Keogh said.When she last saw her mother, “there was something… Something strange happened. I don’t know how to explain it. She just felt isolated and tired.” Winfrey asked Keough if she thought her mother had gone back to drugs. I asked please. “It didn’t feel like a drug,” she says. “I have a lot of experience with drugs. I felt like a tired person.”
At least there was some light in the last few months when Lisa Marie was looking for a reason to move on. “I think her idea of a future career path was to help other parents overcome their grief through grief work. She had a counselor come in and run this kind of grief circle, and she wanted to do a podcast, and if she was going to find a new path for herself, it would be my brother. I think it had to be about.”
Less time is spent exploring Lisa Marie and Michael Jackson’s marriage. This marriage is explored in great depth in this book. Ms Keogh said her mother loved Jackson dearly before things turned sour some time after their marriage. “She was really into him. I remember when he came home, she ran to the bathroom and put on makeup and panicked and wanted to dress herself up for him too. She just loved him… I can only speak about my experience with Michael, and in my experience he was only kind and loving towards me and my family. I had one, and I saw them in a seemingly very happy and loving relationship. I think maybe our normal version was a little different, but in my life it was very It felt normal.” (In the book, Lisa Marie says in response to one of her frequently asked questions that Michael told her she was a virgin when they met, but that ended before they got married. )
The special had some upbeat moments, with Winfrey cheerfully proclaiming, “I’m here!” When the crew arrived at Graceland, she and Lisa Marie called each other “cousin” after a visiting host in 2006 shared the information that Presley was her last name on her maternal grandmother’s side. We shared memories.
Keogh showed off artifacts such as the keys to his mother’s golf cart, which he rode recklessly around Graceland as an adolescent, and the contents of the black box that Elvis Presley carried everywhere.
Ms Winfrey asked Ms Keogh to share her fondest memory with her mother. That’s what Lisa Marie wanted to do to watch over and comfort her granddaughter, Tupelo, when Riley became a mother two years ago.
“She was such a wonderful mother, but she was also especially wonderful with her babies… Her instincts with babies were incredible. The way my mom made us feel loved. In the same way, if I could make (Tupelo) feel loved, it was unconditional,” Keogh said. And even when she was going through tough times, because of the drugs…you know, we got into fights because she did things that I didn’t approve of. Just like with people who do drugs, we’re going to have some bad interactions. But love was always there. ”
Winfrey said, “I think she’s going to love the fact that you and I are together. Everywhere she goes, she says, ‘Thank you, because.'”