Priscilla opens up about her daughter’s demise in her new memoir, the place she makes an attempt to set the file straight on her relationship with Lisa, her marriage to Elvis and extra.
Priscilla Presley is opening up in regards to the devastating demise of her daughter, Lisa Marie Presley.
In her new memoir, Softly, As I Depart You: Life after Elvis, out September 23, the 80-year-old star displays on the painful resolution to take away Lisa Marie from life help following her sudden hospitalization in January 2023.
“It was the second saddest day of my life, aside from dropping Elvis,” Priscilla instructed PEOPLE. “It took a very long time to come back to phrases with the truth that Lisa was gone.”
Lisa Marie died at age 54 from a small bowel obstruction that developed after a previous bariatric surgical procedure. Her ex-husband Danny Keough discovered her unresponsive at dwelling earlier than she was rushed to the hospital.
“We have been there all day lengthy,” Priscilla recalled. “Lisa actually wasn’t respiration, so she was on the ventilator. For hours we have been there ready, hoping and praying till the physician got here in and stated, ‘Priscilla, I am so sorry, she’s gone.’ We simply could not consider it — did not wish to consider it. It was arduous on all of us, it nonetheless is.”
In an emotional excerpt from her e book, Priscilla describes strolling into her daughter’s hospital room and realizing deep down that Lisa Marie had already left.
“I knew from the primary second I walked into Lisa’s hospital room that she was already gone,” she wrote. “She was hooked to a machine that was respiration for her, and she or he had a heartbeat. There was little mind exercise. Her spirit, at all times so very important, wasn’t there.”
The Presley matriarch defined that after docs revived Lisa Marie’s coronary heart, she requested what sort of life her daughter would have if she stayed on machines. “He checked out me with compassion and shook his head. ‘No high quality of life in any respect,'” Priscilla recalled. “I thought of my woman, my wild, rebellious, passionate woman, mendacity in a vegetative state for the remainder of her life. I stated what I needed to. ‘Take her off the machine, Physician.’ My voice was barely above a whisper.”
She added, “The nurse started to unhook the equipment that stored Lisa’s chest rising and falling. I checked out Danny and stated, ‘We’ve got to inform them, Danny. To allow them to say goodbye.’ However as I started to maneuver towards the door, I heard Danny’s anguished cry. ‘No, Nona! Do not go! We will not go away her on their lonesome!’ It was insufferable. I started to sob. I do not bear in mind falling. I do know that [her cousin] Ivy caught me. After that, every part went darkish. I am unable to bear in mind. I do not wish to bear in mind.”
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And it is not the one heartbreak she’s endured in recent times, with Priscilla dropping Lisa Marie’s son Benjamin Keough to suicide in 2020, and serving to her personal son Navarone battle dependancy.
“It hasn’t been straightforward in any respect,” she instructed PEOPLE. “However it’s a must to discover power.”
Now, she finds hope in her household, together with her granddaughter Riley Keough, and Riley’s two younger kids with husband Ben Smith-Petersen.
“That is what makes me blissful: realizing everyone seems to be doing effectively,” Priscilla stated.
Softly, As I Depart You: Life after Elvis will likely be launched September 23 and is obtainable for preorder now.
