In her posthumous memoir, Lisa Marie Presley has revealed she kept her son Benjamin Keough's body on dry ice for two months in a separate bedroom after his death.
"There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately," Lisa Marie wrote in the memoir, "From Here to the Great Unknown," according to People.
Benjamin died by suicide at age 27 in 2020 and it was the last thing Lisa Marie posted about on Instagram before she died Jan. 12, 2023 from complications from bariatric surgery she had several years ago.
Lisa Marie's daughter Riley Keough, who was Benjamin's sister, wrote about how important it was for her mother to "have ample time to say goodbye to him, the same way she'd done with her dad" Elvis Presley, who died in 1977. Lisa Marie was nine at the time.
In her memoir, Lisa Marie explained she enlisted the help of a funeral home owner to get Benjamin's body into the home.
"Having my dad in the house after he died was incredibly helpful because I could go and spend time with him and talk to him," she shared.
Lisa Marie wrote they kept the room where Benjamin's body was stored at 55 degrees. She struggled with the decision of where to lay him to rest, considering both Hawaii and Graceland as options.
"That was part of why it took so long," she wrote. "I got so used to him, caring for him and keeping him there. I think it would scare the living [expletives] out of anybody else to have their son there like that. But not me."
Lisa Marie added: "I felt so fortunate that there was a way that I could still parent him, delay it a bit longer so that I could become OK with laying him to rest."
The family held a funeral service for Benjamin in Malibu, and Lisa Marie eventually chose Graceland as his final resting place, alongside his grandfather, Elvis. Riley placed a pair of her yellow Nike shoes, which Benjamin had always cherished, inside his casket.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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