Lisa Marie Presley held onto her son's body for weeks after his death for a heartbreaking reason

Losing a son or daughter is the most painful thing any parent can imagine, so it’s no wonder many people struggle to bid their child goodbye.

And for Lisa Marie Presley, it was a moment she was determined to put off for as long as possible.

The mother-of-four, who herself died in January 2023 at the age of 54, is best known as the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley.

But, despite her privileged upbringing, she endured more than her fair share of heartbreak over the course of her too-short life.

Her son, Benjamin Keough, died by suicide in 2020, at just 27 years old.

But, rather than bury him straight away, Lisa Marie kept his body on ice at their home for two months in a bid to cope with the grief.

The revelation was made in her newly-published memoir ‘From Here to the Great Unknown,’ which her daughter Riley Keough, 35, finished following her untimely death last year.

"My mom had my brother in the house with us instead of keeping him at the morgue," Riley, an actor who’s best known for starring in Daisy Jones & The Six, wrote in the autobiography.

"They told us that if we could tend to the body, we could have him at home, so she kept him in our house for a while on dry ice."

She continued: "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. And I would go and sit in there with him."

Riley Keough (left) said she felt a duty to finish her mother Lisa Marie Presley's memoir(Getty Images)

Lisa Marie noted in the same book that California, their home state, has no laws mandating exactly when a body needs to be interred or otherwise disposed of.

"My house has a separate casitas bedroom, and I kept Ben Ben in there for two months," the devastated mother wrote of her decision to safeguard her son’s remains.

"There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately. I found a very empathic funeral home owner. I told her that 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 said, 'We’ll bring Ben Ben to you. You can have him there.'"

Elvis’s beloved daughter admitted: "I think it would scare the living f***ing piss out of anybody else to have their son there like that. But not me."

The memoir also clarifies that the room in which Benjamin’s body was kept was maintained at 55F (around 12.7C), and that his mother got “used to caring for him and keeping him there”.

Riley (right) often posts on Instagram about her beloved late brother Benjamin (left)(@rileykeough/Instagram)

Arguably the most surreal moment during this period occurred when Lisa Marie and Riley decided to get tattoos matching those sported by Benjamin.

They consulted a tattoo artist who asked if they had any photos of the designs, to which the grieving mother allegedly replied: “No. But I can show you.”

“Lisa Marie Presley had just asked this poor man to look at the body of her dead son, which happened to be right next to us in the casitas," Riley wrote in the memoir.

"I’ve had an extremely absurd life, but this moment is in the top five."

However, the 35-year-old acknowledged that this proved to be something of a cathartic moment, because: "Soon after that, we all kind of got this vibe from my brother that he didn’t want his body in this house anymore."

"'Guys,' he seemed to be saying, 'this is getting weird,'” Riley recalled.

“Even my mom said that she could feel him talking to her, saying, 'This is insane, Mom, what are you doing? What the f***!'"

Soon after that, Benjamin was laid to rest. And he is now buried, alongside his mother, rockstar grandfather, and other family members at Elvis’s iconic former home Graceland.

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