From Here to the Great Unknown

by Lisa Marie Presley

There are times, too, where it sounds like she wants to burn the world to the ground; other times, she displays compassion and empathy—all facets of the woman who was my mother, each of those strands, beautiful and broken, forged together in early trauma, crashing together at the end of her life.

“After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.” I want this book to make clear the “beauty been” that was my mother.

Graceland was the physical manifestation of the most incredible American dream come to life.

It’s as though all the life that was lived in that house—all the laughter, the tears, the music, the heartbreak, the love—is still being lived over and over, down the staircase, in the walls.

I started to call someone to help me remember it, but realized that there’s no one left to call.

You must have something bigger than the rush drugs give you, bigger than that feeling, bigger than that happiness, bigger than that emptiness.

The boyfriend said that it wasn’t love, it was ownership.

He wasn’t that high-pitched, calculated thing. That was an act.

We’d have huge Thanksgiving meals with everyone dressed up. Nothing was low-key. She wanted every moment to be extraordinary.

I always thought it was important to be gracious and grateful.

Her PI had lost my dad, but he had found my mom, like he always did.

“We were so dramatic, the two of us, that we couldn’t stay contained.”

And then it showed up and burned everything down.

You have to have something bigger, bigger than that feeling of being high, bigger than that happiness, bigger than that emptiness. If you don’t, you’re in trouble.

They make the physical addiction to the body—but the root of the addiction comes from being really unhappy. That’s a spiritual problem.

That drive felt like it lasted seven years. And that’s all I remember about that drive: a drink, the cigarette, and an eternity.

The van just drives away, and you just watch it go.

I came to understand how people go mute through trauma.

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

We all knew my mom was going to die of a broken heart.

Grief settles. It’s not something you overcome. It’s something that you live with.

Some of it was good.

I wondered how many times a heart can break.

When my brother died, I was hit with the realization that he was nowhere to be found on Earth. I could travel anywhere and never find him. No matter how far I flew, how far I drove, how far I walked, he was gone.

Thank you for being my mother in this life.