Priscilla Presley Opens Up About Lisa Marie’s Death and the Moment She Chose Life Support Over a Quiet Goodbye

Kai Montgomery here, and yes, I’m rolling my eyes while I spill the tea you actually want to drink. Oh, fantastic news from the Presley orbit — Priscilla Presley is laying bare the heartbreak behind one of the most devastating nights of her life. In a candid push to promote her memoir, Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis, the 80-year-old matriarch recounts the moment she made the gut punch of a decision that would haunt her forever: taking Lisa Marie Presley off life support.

Priscilla’s recollection sits squarely in the public record through People magazine’s excerpt, and it’s a tale that collapses the lingering questions into one brutal truth. Lisa Marie, the couple’s only child, died in January 2023 after a small bowel obstruction developed in the wake of bariatric surgery she had years earlier. The tragedy is framed as a cascade of loss rather than a single incident — Elvis’s passing, then Lisa Marie’s, followed by the broader family grief that refuses to quit. Priscilla describes the scene with clinical bluntness and visceral emotion: Lisa Marie was connected to a ventilator, drifting in a state that Priscilla describes as a “vegetative state” with “little brain activity,” a testament to the fragility of life and the brutal finality of medical boards and hospital corridors.

The nurse-voiced whisper, the counsel from doctors, and the moment Priscilla finally allowed herself to acknowledge Lisa Marie’s true condition come together to fashion a decision that many families face but few articulate with such stark honesty. When the hospital staff finally told Priscilla there would be no quality of life if the machines continued their work, she confronted a choice that felt both monstrous and merciful: end the artificial breath and let the living person rest in peace. Her account is heavy with grief, including the moment she relived over and over again in that hospital room — the sight of her daughter, the heartbeat there but the sense that the spark was fading. The pressure of the moment is not presented as a sensational pivot but as a raw, grueling obligation to protect her child from a vegetative life that would rob her of any hope for meaningful moments.

The family dynamics add gravity to the narrative. Lisa Marie’s ex-husband, Danny Keough, was the one who found her unresponsive, summoning Priscilla to the hospital where hours stretched into an almost unbearable vigil. The ordeal was not limited to the moment of death. Priscilla also opens up about ongoing sorrow, noting that the loss has rippled through the family for years, from Benjamin Keough’s suicide in 2020 to Navarone Garibaldi’s struggles with addiction and his recovery journey. The account isn’t only about the pain of loss but about resilience — the work of finding strength in the aftermath and the complexity of being a surviving parent under the bright glare of public memory.

Priscilla’s memoir promises to peel back further layers. She reveals Riley Keough’s own sense of visceral transition, noting that Riley felt her mother’s spirit as it left the plane of existence while she was on a flight, a moment that binds the sisters in a shared, spectral memory that only grief can forge. Beyond the personal, there’s a public reckoning: a lawsuit filed by former business partners alleging that Priscilla used Lisa Marie’s life support decision to control the daughter’s trust and Graceland, seeking roughly $50 million. Marty Singer, Priscilla’s lawyer, dismissed the complaint with a blistering retort, labeling it “shameful” and “meritless.” And through all the legal thunder, Priscilla’s voice anchors the narrative, insisting this book is a candid, necessary confession rather than a publicity stunt.

The larger arc is rooted in the Presley legacy, always under the microscope — a family whose fame and fortune have brought both adoration and relentless scrutiny. The memoir’s release, set for September 23, frames this spring of memory as a deliberate act of storytelling, a way to define life after Elvis, after Lisa Marie, after that decisive, devastating choice in a quiet hospital room. The question remains: what more will Priscilla reveal as she continues her tour of reflection?

So, what’s next? The book drops, and with it the chance to hear more about a family that cannot seem to escape the spotlight, even when they want nothing more than to grieve in private. Stay tuned for more revelations, the kind that rewrite what we thought we knew about a beloved icon’s circle and the toll of living in the public eye.

Sources: Celebrity Storm and People Magazine

New York Post
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