Lisa Marie Presley Recounts the Day Her Father Elvis Presley Died

In her posthumous memoir From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie Presley shares the story of the day her legendary music star father Elvis Presley died: A day that left a lasting impact not only on her, but also on countless grieving fans.

Lisa Marie was just nine years old when Presley died of a heart attack in August 1977 at the age of 42.

In the book, she recalls waking up the afternoon he died with the feeling that something was wrong, the BBC reports. She ran to Presley’s room and saw him in the ensuite bathroom, laying face down on the floor.

People adds more details from the book about that day, reporting that Lisa Marie ran up to her father, but someone restrained her before she reached him.

“They were trying to work on him,” she recalls. “I was screaming bloody murder. I knew it was not good.”

She also remembers the sound of her grandfather, Presley’s father, crying. “That noise. I’ll never get past that sound of him wailing. I could hear, ‘Oh, he’s gone. He’s gone,'” she continues.

Amid memorial proceedings, Presley’s body was laid in an open casket at Graceland for two days, and Lisa Marie remembers waiting to be alone with her father, so that she could “touch his face and hold his hand, to talk to him.”

Lisa Marie’s daughter Riley Keough co-authored From Here to the Great Unknown and completed the book by listening to audio recordings of her mother’s memories following her death. She also adds some perspective of her own, saying in this passage that she believes Lisa Marie never fully processed her father’s death.

Lisa Marie also noted that the grief of losing Presley stayed fresh in her mind well into adulthood.

“There have been nights as an adult when I would just get drunk and listen to his music and sit there and cry,” she writes. “The grief still comes. It’s still just there.”

Read More: Riley Keough Says Lisa Marie Presley “Died of a Broken Heart”

• Lisa Marie Presley died on Jan. 12, 2023 at the age of 54.
• Her primary cause of death was listed as a “sequelae of small bowel obstruction,” and other “significant conditions” were listed as contributing factors, including residual complications from a surgery she’d had years prior.
• A toxicology report ruled out foul play, death by suicide and overdose.