When Lisa Marie Presley’s son Benjamin Keough committed suicide in 2020 she started living on borrowed time, Elvis Presley’s granddaughter Riley Keough told Oprah Winfrey in a exclusive primetime special “An Oprah Special: The Presleys – Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley,” aired Tuesday on CBS.
“I just couldn’t imagine a world where she would be successful without him,” Keough said of the final years she shared with her famous mother and how she dealt with her brother’s death, while she finished co-writing “From Here to the Great Unknown,” Lisa Marie’s posthumous memoir.
“She was saying, ‘I’m going to die of a broken heart,’ and I think we felt it,” Keough told Winfrey.
Lisa Marie’s grief was so immense that she kept Ben’s coffin in her home for about two months after his death. She worked with a funeral home owner to ensure the body was preserved – using dry ice – until it was ready to be buried.
“Everyone in the house was grieving,” Keough said, adding that Lisa Marie felt comforted when she sat near the body.
During the grieving period, Lisa Marie enlisted the help of a tattoo artist to help her get her ink before putting Ben to rest. She wanted to have a tattoo like his on her hand – the same place he had a tattoo.
“My mother was very much herself,” Keough said. “She wasn’t crazy.”
Keough remembers how Lisa Marie took the artist to Ben’s casket to show him the location of the tattoo, making sure the location would be exactly correct.
“He says, okay, do you have any pictures?” Keough remembers the tattoo artist asking him. “And she said, ‘No, but I can show you.'”
Keough said the tattoo artist was very professional, researched the placement and created the meaningful tattoo for Lisa Marie.
The tattoo honoring their mother-son bond proved just how close the two were. In her memoir, Lisa Marie wrote about how Ben resembled her father Elvis.
“Ben looked a lot like his grandfather, very, very, very and in every way. He even looked like him. Ben looked so much like him, it scared me. I didn’t want to tell him because I thought it It was too much for one child to do. He told me everything. Ben and I had the same relationship as my father and his mother. Gladys loved my father so much. so much so that she drank herself to death worrying about him, Ben had no fucking chance,” Lisa Marie wrote.
Stream Winfrey’s exclusive hour-long interview with Keough on Tuesday, October 8 at 8:00 PM ET/PT on CBS. “An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley” will air live on Paramount+ for “Paramount+ with Showtime” subscribers and will be available on demand the next day for “Paramount+ Essentials” subscribers.
If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or suicidal crisis, you can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis lifeline by calling or texting 988. You can also chat with the 988 Suicide lifeline & Crisis here.
For more information about mental health care resources and support, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Helpline can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. ET, at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or by email at info@nami.org.
