Priscilla Presley has said losing her only daughter Lisa Marie Presley to cardiac arrest in 2023 was the ‘second saddest’ day of her life after her ex-husband Elvis Presley’s death.
The 80-year-old, who was married to the King of Rock from 1967 until 1973 – four years before he died in 1977 – is promoting her new book Softly, as I Leave You: Live After Elvis.
‘It was the second saddest day of my life, other than losing Elvis,’ Priscilla told People in a recent interview.
‘It took a long time to come to terms with the fact that Lisa was gone.’
Lisa Marie died aged 54 on January 12 2023 after a small bowel obstruction caused a cardiac arrest, which occurred from complications after undergoing weight loss surgery.
Talking about the day Lisa Marie died, Priscilla said: ‘We were there all day long.
She added: ‘Lisa really wasn’t breathing, so she was on the ventilator. For hours we were there waiting, hoping and praying until the doctor came in and said, “Priscilla, I’m so sorry, she’s gone.’
‘We just couldn’t believe it — didn’t want to believe it. It was hard on all of us, it still is.’
An extract from Priscilla’s book, she described the moment.
It reads: ‘They had restarted Lisa’s heart, but there was no guarantee it would keep beating. I asked the doctor, “What kind of life will she have if we keep her on that machine?”
‘He looked at me with compassion and shook his head. “No quality of life at all.”
‘I thought about my girl, my wild, rebellious, passionate girl, lying in a vegetative state for the rest of her life.
‘I said what I had to. “Take her off the machine, Doctor.” My voice was barely above a whisper.’
She continued: ‘It was unbearable. I began to sob. I don’t remember falling. I know that Ivy caught me. After that, everything went dark. I can’t remember. I don’t want to remember.’
This tragedy came 46 years after Elvis died, when Lisa Marie was just nine.
Priscilla met Elvis aged just 14 when the Jailhouse Rock hitmaker – who was 10 years her senior – was in the army.
Appearing on Loose Women, Priscilla previously spoke about how her teenage years were unlike any other young girl’s.
‘I didn’t have my teenage years as a normal girl, so I had to adapt,’ she explained to the panelists before adding: ‘You lived his life, you didn’t have your own life, you saw things he wanted to see, you listened to the music he wanted to listen to, you would go to the places he wanted to go.’
‘So you really kind of lost yourself. As a woman I didn’t really know who I was.’
She went onto talk about their 1973 divorce and how she only discovered herself when reaching the age of 27.
‘I realised that I don’t know who I was, my considerations were his considerations, my fears were his fears, I found myself revealing things that he would say to me.’
Despite this, the star was still very much in love with Elvis.
‘I did not divorce him because I didn’t love him, he was the love of my life,’ she stated.
‘I divorced him even though I still loved him, but I needed to find out what the world was like, but the greatest thing about our relationship is that we still loved each other.’
At the time of their marriage, the actress was 21 and claimed to be a virgin, despite living with the singer for five years.
However, on their wedding night she has since revealed that they consummated their love in a ‘frenzy of passion.’
‘The intensity of emotion I was experiencing was electrifying,’ she explained in her book Elvis and Me: ‘The desire and lust that had built up in me throughout the years exploded.’
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