Lisa Marie Presley has candidly admitted that her son Benjamin Keough’s death “detonated and destroyed” her life.
To mark National Grief Awareness Day in the U.S. on Tuesday, the singer wrote an emotional essay about the grief and loss she has experienced since Benjamin died by suicide in July 2020 at the age of 27.
Describing his passing as her “worst nightmare”, Lisa Marie wrote, “My and my three daughters’ lives as we knew it were completely detonated and destroyed by his death. We live in this every. Single. Day.”
“I’m saying all this, on this particular day, National Grief Awareness Day, in the hopes that I can help raise some awareness on grief and loss,” she continued in her essay, published by People. “Just know after this day passes, for all your friends who have had a loved one die, every day is grief awareness day. I’m saying this, in the hopes that it helps someone who is suffering as I and my children suffer.”
The 54-year-old, the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, confessed that she keeps going for the sake of her daughter Riley, 33, and 13-year-old twin girls Finley and Harper.
“It’s a real choice to keep going, one that I have to make every single day and one that is constantly challenging to say the least… But I keep going for my girls,” she explained. “I keep going because my son made it very clear in his final moments that taking care of his little sisters and looking out for them were on the forefront of his concerns and his mind. He absolutely adored them and they him.”
Elsewhere in the essay, Lisa Marie admitted she felt “judged” and like “a pariah” following Benjamin’s premature death and she “beat myself up tirelessly and chronically, blaming myself every single day” over the tragedy.
She also revealed that some of her loved ones ran “for the hills” instead of being there for her after he died and she now attends and hosts support groups with other bereaved parents.