Lisa Marie Presley wrote about grief over son Benjamin's suicide in her final Instagram post before her death
- Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, died Thursday at 54.
- Five months before her death, she wrote an essay for People in which she opened up about grief.
Lisa Marie Presley's final social-media post before her death was about her grief over the death of her son, Benjamin Keough.
The only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley died Thursday at 54, her agent said in a statement to Insider. TMZ reported Presley went into cardiac arrest at her home in Calabasas, California.
In her final Instagram post, which was shared on August 31, Presley opened up about her "grief" over her son's suicide.
"In honor of it being National Grief Awareness Day, I wrote an essay about Grief which was posted today on @people," her post said. "I thought I'd post it here in the hopes that anyone who needs to hear all of this it helps in some way."
In the accompanying essay for People — which was published the same month as the 45th anniversary of her father's death — Presley said she had "been living in the horrific reality" of grief since her son's death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2020.
He was Presley's youngest child with the musician Danny Keough and was 27 when he died.
"I'm sharing my thoughts in the hopes that somehow, we can change that," she said, adding: "Grief does not stop or go away in any sense.
"Grief is something you will have to carry with you for the rest of your life, in spite of what certain people or our culture wants us to believe. You do not 'get over it,' you do not 'move on,' period."
Presley wrote that her daughters — the actor Riley Keough, 33, whom she also shared with Keough, and the 14-year-old twins Finley Aaron Love and Harper Vivienne Anne, whom she shared with her ex-husband Michael Lockwood — "were completely detonated and destroyed by his death."
Elsewhere in the essay, Presley said she blamed herself for her son's death.
"I already battle with and beat myself up tirelessly and chronically, blaming myself every single day and that's hard enough to now live with," she wrote. "But others will judge and blame you too, even secretly or behind your back, which is even more cruel and painful on top of everything else."
Presley was last seen in public Tuesday at the 80th Golden Globe Awards, where the actor Austin Butler won in the best-actor category for his portrayal of her father in Baz Luhrmann's 2022 film "Elvis," a biopic about the king of rock 'n' roll.
Joined by her mother and Jerry Schilling, her close friend and talent manager, Presley was seen cheering Butler on as he delivered an emotional acceptance speech in which he thanked the Presley family for their support.
TMZ reported paramedics arrived at Presley's home Thursday after receiving a call that the singer was experiencing cardiac arrest. According to TMZ, she was given CPR, and epinephrine was administered on the scene to help her regain a pulse.
"It is with a heavy heart that I must share the devastating news that my beautiful daughter Lisa Marie has left us," her mother said in a statement Thursday. "She was the most passionate, strong, and loving woman I have ever known."
Correction: January 13, 2023 — An earlier version of this story misstated the outlet that reported on paramedics responding at Lisa Marie Presley's home. TMZ reported the information, not Insider.