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Riley Keough tells Oprah that Lisa Marie Presley never recovered from Benjamin’s death: "She would..."

During the grieving period, Lisa Marie requested a tattoo artist to create a symbolic tribute to her son on her hand. She wished to have a tattoo like his.

Lisa Marie Presley was burdened with grief and blamed herself for the sudden death of her son, Benjamin Keough, who tragically died by suicide in July 2020 at the age of 27. Overwhelmed with sadness, Presley addressed her feelings in an essay to People. She wrote, "I already battle with and beat myself up tirelessly and chronically, blaming myself every single day, and that's hard enough to now live with." As per the Daily Mail, in an exclusive interview with Oprah Winfrey months after Lisa Marie's passing, Riley Keough opened up about her mother's difficulties coping with her brother's loss. "She would say, 'I'm going to die of a broken heart,' and I think we felt that," Keough recalled. 

"The moment my brother died, I was like, 'This is the end of her,'" she continued. "They were as close as Elvis was with his mother, and I just couldn't imagine a world where she would make it without him." The 'Beast' actress confessed that her mother appeared 'withdrawn' from reality during her final days. At this point, Oprah questioned the 'Zola' actress if she was concerned that her mother had relapsed into opioid addiction. Keough dismissed it, saying, "It didn't feel like drugs. I have a lot of experience with drugs. It felt like a tired person." She added, "There were a couple of interactions with her that she just felt detached in a way, a kind of a resignation." 

In her posthumous memoir, 'From Here to the Great Unknown,' Lisa Marie gushed about her son's striking resemblance to her father, Elvis Presley. She called their connection a "generational cycle." "Ben was very similar to his grandfather, very, very, very, and in every way. He even looked like him. Ben was so much like him, it scared me. I didn't want to tell him because I thought it was too much to put on a kid. We were very close. He'd tell me everything. Ben and I had the same relationship that my father and his mother had," she wrote. 

Lisa Marie wasn't ready to let go of her beloved son, even after his death, so she preserved his body on dry ice for two months before making the final emotional call to put him to rest. According to CBS News, Keough recalled that her mother "felt comfort when she sat by the body." The 'Hold the Dark' actress revealed that during the grieving period, Lisa Marie requested a tattoo artist to create a symbolic tribute to her son on her hand. She wished to have a tattoo like his. "My mom was just very much herself," Keough said. "She wasn't a crazy lady."

Keough remembered how Lisa Marie made sure the tattoo placement was perfect by bringing the artist to Ben's coffin to show him."He's like, okay, do you have any photos?" she recalled the tattoo artist asking. "And she was like, 'No, but I can show you.'" She claimed that the tattoo artist was skilled; he carefully considered the request, and he produced a meaningful design for her mother. Keough remarked that the tattoo proved how much Lisa Marie adored her late brother.