From Here to the Great Unknown

by Lisa Marie Presley

And I realized in that moment that all of these phrases I use, and the things I say to my daughter, are the ways my mom spoke to me. She had gotten them directly from her dad. From the South. And all of them are alive in me. I can hear her saying, “Get over here, goddamn it, and give me some sugar!” She mothers my daughter through me.

We were all very close, forever cuddling, curled up in bed together. So when it got dark, how could it not affect all of us? All our lives my mother had been leading the way, and none of us could get used to her not having her usual strength.

I don’t think my spark will ever come back, to be perfectly honest. Grief settles. It’s not something you overcome. It’s something that you live with. You adapt to it. Nothing about you is who you were. Nothing about how or what I used to think is important. The truth is that I don’t remember who I was.