Lisa Marie Presley Places Son Benjamin's Body On Dry Ice, Gets Matching Tattoo To Help Her Grieving

after death After Lisa Marie Presley's son Benjamin Keefe committed suicide in 2020, the singer and Elvis Presley's only child struggled to process his son's death.

Presley's granddaughter Riley Keefe told Oprah Winfrey on a CBS special, “The Presleys – Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley,” on Tuesday, “I couldn't imagine a world where he would make it without her.”

Keefe opened up about her mother's posthumous memoir, From here to the great unknownwhich he co-wrote, and his family's time at Graceland in Memphis, where Lisa Marie lived for part of her childhood. After her brother's death, Keough said her mother would say, “I'm dying of a broken heart.”

During the interview, Winfrey recalled Lisa Marie saying she didn't know if she could continue after her son's suicide. “I knew it was the end of him. You know that?” Keough said. “I think I felt grateful, because I felt like I was on borrowed time.”

Winfrey asked Keough to read a passage from the memoir, in which her mother wrote: “Ben was very similar to his grandfather, very, very, very, and in every way. He even looked like him. Ben was just like him, it scared me. I I didn't want to tell him because I was too close. He told me that my father and his mother had the same relationship. He loved my father so much Worrying himself to death, Ben didn't stand a chance.”

Keough says that in the book, Lisa Marie explains why she decided to store her late son's body in dry ice at her Los Angeles mansion for two months until it was ready for burial.

“I think the plan was to bury him here with his father, and we weren't going to come [to Graceland] For about three weeks,” said Keough, who added that her brother will be housed at the funeral home during that time. “I think he just didn't like the idea that he was away,” the actress said of Lisa Marie. “She didn't know what was going on, and I think she just wanted control over the situation to give our family … and just be a mom.”

Keough said Lisa Marie felt comforted when she sat next to her brother's body. D Daisy Jones and the Six The star also shared that during her mother's grieving process, Lisa Marie expressed her desire to get a matching tattoo on her hand with her son – in the same place where she had the tattoo.

“I think that story on paper, I can see it sounds completely crazy and absurd. But I — my mother was very much herself,” Keough said. “She was not a mad woman.”

Keough said her mother invited a tattoo artist to look at Benjamin's body to determine the exact location. “[The tattoo artist]God bless him, was very natural about the whole thing,” said Keough. “It's definitely one of the most, like, absurd moments.”

After the artist left, Keough said she told her mother, “Do you know how crazy that was, what you just did?”

Lisa Marie died on January 12, 2023 after suffering a heart attack at her home in Calabasas, California. He was buried at Graceland next to Benjamin. A few months before she was laid to rest, Lisa wrote a candid essay for Mary people About feeling “devastated” after her son's death.

“Death is part of life, whether we like it or not – and so is grieving. There's a lot to learn and understand, but here's what I know so far: One is that grief doesn't stop or go away, even a year or so after a loss. No,” Presley wrote. “Grief is something you have to carry with you throughout your life, despite what certain people or our culture would have us believe.”