Lisa Marie Presley said son’s suicide literally ‘shattered’ her heart, described ‘unrelenting’ grief

The death of Lisa Marie Presley from cardiac arrest has left many shocked, saddened and wondering how her loss could come so suddenly and at the relatively the young age of 54.

People question whether the only daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley inherited heart troubles from her father, who also died prematurely of cardiac arrest in 1977 at the age of 42. Meanwhile, Presley herself has been open about how much she had been struggling, certainly emotionally, since the 2020 suicide of her son Benjamin Keough.

In May, she wrote on Instagram, “Navigating through this hideous grief that absolutely destroyed and shattered my heart and my soul into almost nothing has swallowed me whole. Not much else aside from my other three children gets my time and attention anymore.”

Keough died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 27 on July 12, 2020, at his mother’s former home in Calabasas, outside Los Angeles. Marking National Grief Awareness Day in August, Presley wrote an essay for People magazine about the overwhelming grief she continues to feel over her son’s death. She said that her only motivation “to keep going” was her daughters, actor Riley Keough and 14-year-old twins, Harper and Finley.

Grief is known to exact a heavy toll on a person’s health, Time reported in August, citing studies that show that people are more likely to die when they’re in mourning than otherwise. Scientific literature has even given this phenomenon a name — the “widowhood effect.” Grief can activate the nervous system, including the part that triggers the body’s “flight or fight” response. The overstimulation of this response has been linked to heart failure, Time explained.

As recently as Sunday, four days before her death, Presley looked “incredibly sad” as she stood before fans of her late father at Graceland, his legendary Memphis, Tennessee, estate, the Daily Mail reported. Presley and the fans were there to mark what would have been the icon’s 88th birthday.

Presley told the crowd that they were the “only people” who could get her out of the house. Fans also said she seemed to be “really hurting,” the Daily Mail reported.

Still, Presley managed to leave her home on Tuesday night to attend the Golden Globe Awards. She was there to support “Elvis,” Baz Luhrmann’s biopic about her father. While she appeared to be in an upbeat mood during a red carpet interview with Extra TV, she also visibly struggled to stand and needed help walking, Entertainment Tonight reported. She also was seen crying with her mother as actor Austin Butler accepted his Golden Globe award for best actor for his portrayal of her father.

In the wake of Lisa Marie Presley’s death, people may look for clues in the Presley family history. The Daily Mail noted that Elvis Presley’s mother died of heart failure at 46, and several family members also had heart problems. The Daily Mail also quoted the author of a 2021 biography, “Elvis: Destined to Die Young,” who argued that the early deaths of Elvis Presley, his mother, Gladys, and other family members were likely caused by a genetic defect.

There also will be questions about whether Lisa Marie Presley’s admitted struggles with substance abuse and addiction contributed to any health problems she may have been dealing with at the time of her death. She told People magazine in 2003 that she abused cocaine, sedatives, marijuana and alcohol when she was younger — “I just couldn’t be sober,” Entertainment Tonight reported. She later struggled for years with an addiction to prescription opioids that led to her entering rehab in 2016, as she wrote in the forward the 2019 book, “The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain.”

Page Six reported that there appeared to be no drugs on the scene of Presley’s medical emergency Thursday, which was her Calabasas home. An official cause of death is pending an autopsy and coroner’s report.

TMZ reported that Presley’s housekeeper found her unresponsive. Her ex-husband, Danny Keough, with whom she has remained close, performed CPR on her until paramedics arrived and took over, TMZ also said. Paramedics administered at least one dose of epinephrine during resuscitation efforts and were able to regain a pulse before she was transported to the hospital. But at the hospital, Page Six said, Presley “coded multiple times” before she died.

In her essay on grief for People, Presley wrote that she had dealt with death, grief and loss since the age of 9, when her father died. But the death of her “beautiful, beautiful son” was beyond what she thought she could bear. She wrote that being in mourning for him was incredibly lonely, particularly because the sudden death of a child seems “unnatural” and can make a parent “a pariah in a sense.”

“You can feel stigmatized and perhaps judged in some way as to why the tragic loss took place,” Presley wrote. “I already battle with and beat myself up tirelessly and chronically, blaming myself every single day and that’s hard enough to live with, but others will judge and blame you too, even secretly or behind your back which is even more cruel and painful on top of everything else.”

Because of the stigma, missing her son and everything else, Presley wrote that she had to make “a real choice to keep going.”

“Grief does not stop or go away in any sense, a year, or years after the loss,” Presley said. “Grief is something you will have to carry with you for the rest of your life, in spite of what certain people or our culture wants us to believe. You do not ‘get over it,’ you do not ‘move on,’ period.”