A lot of mental stories coming out of the posthumous memoir of Lisa Marie Presley this week, and this one is about 100x crazier than the revelation that Michael Jackson was a virgin until the age of 35.
According to the new book, titled From Here To The Great Unknown, Lisa Marie kept her son’s body on dry ice in a room in her house for 2 months after he died, and would go into the room and talk to him as she came to terms with his death.
Her son Benjamin – who was known to as ‘Ben Ben’ by those closest to him – was found dead in Calabasas, California, four years ago after taking his own life. Considering the manner of his death was an intraoral gunshot blast, I’m not sure how Lisa Marie Presley could bear the sight for that long but I guess grief does strange things to people.
Presley was understandably left ‘beyond devastated’ by the death of her child, who she previously said had an ‘uncanny’ resemblance to her dad Elvis.
Discussing how she dealt with the tragedy, the mother-of-four explained that her LA home had a ‘separate casitas bedroom’ which is where she kept 27-year-old Ben’s corpse on dry ice for two months.
Presley wrote: “There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately”.
She praised a funeral home owner for helping her arrange the setup, while her daughter Riley (who completed the memoir following Lisa Marie’s death in January 2023) added that it was ‘really important’ for Presley to ‘have ample time to say goodbye, the same way she did with her dad’ Elvis.
Presley explained that she also kept her son’s body close because she was debating over whether to bury him in Hawaii or in Graceland alongside Elvis.
“That was part of why it took so long,” Presley explained. “I got so used to him, caring for him and keeping him there. I think it would scare the living f**kng piss out of anybody else to have their son there like that. But not me.
“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 okay with laying him to rest.”
The book also reveals that before Ben’s burial, Presley and her daughter decided to get matching tattoos in his memory and invited a tattoo artist in to see the ones he had so they could replicate them. Ben had his sister’s name on his collarbone and his mother’s on his hand.
In the book, Riley writes: “I’ve had an extremely absurd life, but this moment is in the top five.”
Eventually, Riley explained that she and her relatives ‘got this vibe from Ben’ that he no longer wanted his body lingering in the family home.
Riley wrote: “‘Guys,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘This is getting weird’. Even my mom said that she could feel him talking to her, saying, ‘This is insane, Mom, what are you doing? What the f**k!'”
Ben was laid to rest alongside his legendary granddad in Graceland in October 2020, just as Lisa Marie Presley was following her passing last year following a small bowel obstruction.
