From Here to the Great Unknown

by Lisa Marie Presley

“Pookie, I don’t know how to write my book anymore. Can you write it with me?”

“Of course I can,” I said. The last ten years of her life had been so brutally hard that she was only able to look back on everything through that lens. She felt I could have a more holistic view of her life than she could. So I agreed to help her with it, not thinking much of the commitment, assuming we would write it together over time. A month later, she died.

Whatever spiritual force my grandfather possessed undoubtedly ran through my mother’s veins. When you were with her, you could feel it.

She didn’t want to gain pregnancy weight. She thought that wouldn’t be a good look for her as Elvis’s wife. There were so many women after him, all of them beautiful. She wanted his undivided attention. She was so upset that she was pregnant that initially she’d only eat apples and eggs and never gained much weight. I was a pain in her ass immediately and I always felt she didn’t want me.

My mom fundamentally felt she was broken, unlovable, not beautiful. There was a profound sense of unworthiness in her, and I could never really figure out why. I’ve spent my whole life trying to work out the answer. My mother was an incredibly complicated person and deeply misunderstood.

My mom wanted to look good for my dad, so she decided to put on false eyelashes before he came in to see us. But she was still drugged out and glued them to the mirror instead of to her eyelids.

In May 1957, Elvis’s mom, Gladys; dad, Vernon; and grandmother, Minnie Mae moved in—Elvis came a little later, on June 26, 1957

He was determined to make his new home an opulent place, and what you do, when you’re from the South, is move the entire family in—the aunties, the cousins, everyone. When you come up from poverty, your responsibility is to bring everybody with you, and that’s what he did.

It’s a strange and incredible thing to have your family’s history preserved forever in the place where it all happened.

Whenever I go to the South and hear the Memphis accent, I feel a longing, a nostalgia for something I never lived.

I’ve never lived in Memphis. But something inside of me has.

I was four when they split up. But I remained so close with my dad. I knew how much I was adored, how much he loved me. I knew that he knew that I hated, hated, hated leaving him. Hated, hated, hated going to my mother’s new home in Los Angeles. Loathed it. He got a house there to be closer to me.

He was very gregarious in that way: He didn’t do it to have an entourage follow him. He was generous because he wanted everyone else to enjoy everything.

My dad didn’t talk about my mom in a bad way at all. He did not want me to think negatively of her. In retrospect, they did a fantastic job maintaining a united front and a real friendship bond. There was still a lot of love between them, and they really put on a good front for me. I was very lucky.

I wasn’t alone, but I was very lonely.

He was respectful, though—he wasn’t rude to people, he wasn’t an angry person, he didn’t live there. Some people full-on live in destruction, others buy some real estate and walk around in anger for a little while. My dad would just visit.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t talk to anyone about anything. I just internalized it all.

Looking back, there was really only one thing I was sure of: that I was loved by my dad.

That afternoon, once they took him away—and this is something I’ve been upset about my whole life—it turned into a free-for-all. Everybody went to town. Everything was swiped, wiped clean—jewelry, artifacts, personal items—before he was even pronounced dead. You can still find things from that day coming up at auction.

That was the first time I

really felt the loss—obviously from my dad passing away, but more than anything, I felt I was stuck with this woman. It was a one-two punch: He’s dead and now I’m stuck with her.

One night in France I told my mom I was a reincarnated Marie Antoinette and that I had to go to Versailles. So, she took me there and I was walking around saying, “Yeah, I recognize this, I recognize that….”

I remember when I was little feeling angry at Elvis for leaving my mother and for causing all this pain.

Whenever I would hear Elvis’s voice, I would feel my mother’s anguish. Feel the loss of him.

This was a huge lesson for me—the only way out is through. You must allow pain in to free yourself from it.

Grief settles. It’s not something you overcome. It’s something that you live with. You adapt to it.