NEED TO KNOW
- In her new memoir Softly, as I Leave You: Life After Elvis, excerpted exclusively in this week’s PEOPLE cover story, Priscilla Presley recalls the heartbreaking moment she decided to take daughter Lisa Marie Presley off life support
- Priscilla was by Lisa Marie’s side when she died in the hospital at age 54 in 2023, from a small bowel obstruction that developed after a bariatric surgery
- Two years after Lisa Marie’s death, Priscilla tells PEOPLE the loss is “still” hard on her and the whole family
Now more than ever, Priscilla Presley is ready to take back control of her narrative.
In her revelatory new memoir Softly, as I Leave You: Life After Elvis, out Sept. 23, Priscilla, now 80, goes deep into the turmoil she has faced in the years since her late ex-husband Elvis Presley — whom she divorced in 1973 — died at age 42 in 1977. Amongst her toughest days was the death of her and Elvis’ only daughter Lisa Marie Presley two years ago.
Take PEOPLE with you! Subscribe to PEOPLE magazine to get the latest details on celebrity news, exclusive royal updates, how-it-happened true crime stories and more — right to your mailbox.
“It was the second saddest day of my life, other than losing Elvis,” Priscilla tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story, on newsstands Friday. “It took a long time to come to terms with the fact that Lisa was gone.”
Lisa Marie died at age 54 on Jan. 12, 2023, from a small bowel obstruction that developed after a bariatric surgery she’d had years prior. Lisa Marie’s ex-husband Danny Keough was the one who found her unresponsive at home, and he called Priscilla to tell her to meet them at the hospital.
“We were there all day long,” Priscilla says. “Lisa really wasn’t breathing, so she was on the ventilator. For hours we were there waiting, hoping and praying until the doctor came in and said, ‘Priscilla, I’m so sorry, she’s gone.’ We just couldn’t believe it — didn’t want to believe it. It was hard on all of us, it still is.”
Not only does she recount her daughter Lisa Marie’s final moments (see her heartbreaking words in the excerpt below), but she also opens up about grieving for her grandson, Lisa Marie and Danny’s son Benjamin Keough, after his death by suicide at age 27 in 2020 and helping her 38-year-old son Navarone (whom she shares with ex Marco Garibaldi) get clean from drug addiction.
“It hasn’t been easy at all,” Priscilla says. “But you have to find strength.”
These days the Presley family matriarch finds inspiration in Navarone, who she says is sober and in a “good place,” and her granddaughter Riley Keough, whom Lisa Marie also shared with Danny. She’s also found great joy in her role as great-grandma to Riley, 36, and her husband Ben Smith-Petersen’s two children: daughter Tupelo, 3, and another child PEOPLE confirms the couple welcomed earlier this year.
“That’s what makes me happy: knowing everyone is doing well,” Priscilla says.
Read an exclusive early excerpt from Softly As I Leave You, below.
I knew from the first moment I walked into Lisa’s hospital room that she was already gone. She was hooked to a machine that was breathing for her, and she had a heartbeat. There was little brain activity. Her spirit, always so vital, wasn’t there. Riley later told us that while she was still on her flight, she had felt her mother’s spirit pass. But none of us was ready to give up yet.
A nurse came to tell me that Navarone had arrived. I asked her to bring him into the room. Then we began to wait. Finally, Navarone voiced the question we were all thinking. How long until we knew if she was going to start breathing again? The doctor said it could be two minutes. Or it could be two days. After two hours, Navarone couldn’t take the anxiety any longer. He left to go into the other room.
The others were allowed in one or two at a time. Danny and I remained, holding Lisa’s hands, stroking her face, telling her we loved her.
At some point, I remember that a nurse took me into the other room, where [my cousin] Ivy stepped forward to meet me. The nurse told Ivy to see to it that I ate and drank something. My cousin took my arm, but then we heard an emergency alarm from Lisa’s room. It was a code blue; Lisa’s heart had stopped. As I started back to my daughter, the nurse detained Ivy and spoke to her in a whisper.
Nodding toward me, she told Ivy, “Come with us. I need you to stand right behind her. She’s going to fall, and you will need to catch her.”
The next thing I remember is the doctor talking to me. He asked me what I wanted him to do. They had restarted Lisa’s heart, but there was no guarantee it would keep beating. I asked the doctor, “What kind of life will she have if we keep her on that machine?”
He looked at me with compassion and shook his head. “No quality of life at all.”
I thought about my girl, my wild, rebellious, passionate girl, lying in a vegetative state for the rest of her life.
I said what I had to. “Take her off the machine, Doctor.” My voice was barely above a whisper.
The nurse began to unhook the apparatus that kept Lisa’s chest rising and falling. I looked at Danny and said, “We have to tell them, Danny. So they can say goodbye.”
But as I began to move toward the door, I heard Danny’s anguished cry.“No, Nona! Don’t go! We can’t leave her all alone!”
It was unbearable. I began to sob. I don’t remember falling. I know that Ivy caught me. After that, everything went dark. I can’t remember. I don’t want to remember.
Adapted from Softly, as I Leave You: Life After Elvis by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley with Mary Jane Ross, published on Sept. 23, 2025. Copyright © 2025 by GLDE, Inc. Used by arrangement with Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group. All rights reserved.
Softly, As I Leave You: Life after Elvis will be published on Sept. 23 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.
Read the full article here
