Jess Battison
Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide which some readers may find distressing.
Lisa Marie Presley had a tattoo artist look at the body of her dead son after keeping him in her house for months after his death.
Her daughter, Riley Keough, revealed the sad anecdote during a recent Oprah interview, having finished her late mum’s memoir which was published on Tuesday (8 October) and recounts this moment.
During the interview, Riley explained how Lisa Marie (the only child of Elvis) kept the body of her brother Benjamin on dry ice in a guest home following his death in 2020.
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The 27-year-old died as a result of suicide in 2020 following a long battle with mental health problems.
Writing in From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie didn’t say goodbye to her son straight away, partly due to her being torn on whether he would be buried in Hawaii or at Graceland.
She wrote: "My house has a separate casitas bedroom and I kept Ben Ben in there for two months. There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately.
"I found a very empathetic funeral home owner … She said, ‘We’ll bring Ben Ben to you'."
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And Riley said: "It was really important for my mom to have ample time to say goodbye to him, the same way she'd done with her dad."
Riley and her mum decided to get Benjamin’s name tattooed in the same place where he had theirs – the collarbone for his sister, and hand for his mum.
With the tattoo artist round to do the inking, Riley told Oprah: “He's like, 'Okay, do you have any photos?' Kind of a thing. And she was, like, 'No - but I can show you.'"
She added: "And I was just sitting there, like, this is ... I stayed quiet because it's my mom. She - she does what she wants. But it was definitely one of the most, like, absurd moments."
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And Riley recalled the awkward interaction in the memoir as she summarised: “I've had an extremely absurd life, but this moment is in the top five.”
Considering the circumstances, the star said the tattoo artist was ‘very normal about the whole thing’
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, please don’t suffer alone. Call Samaritans for free on their anonymous 24-hour phone line on 116 123.