When I wrote my initial blog post about Graceland this past summer, I was plagued by a fever for houses with histories and stuck in my own longing for the past. Screening the Elvis Presley biopic and watching Elvis’ daughter Lisa Marie promote it from the jungle room stirred a nostalgia in me that I couldn’t shake.

I’m a fan of Elvis like anyone else, but it is Graceland the mansion and all it represents that I’m most drawn to. When Elvis died in 1977, the house and all its contents went to Lisa Marie who kept it very much a family home. It is one of America’s largest attractions drawing 500,000 visitors a year, but the lure of Graceland is that it once was Elvis’ sanctuary and the place Lisa Marie grew up – and the home she still returned to when she needed comfort. Lisa Marie was the world’s connection to Elvis and the mansion and a time more magical.

When Lisa Marie Presley died on January 12, 2023, my heart broke in a way I didn’t expect. She has been a peripheral figure in my life for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I watched Elvis' funeral on television and stared at photos of Lisa Marie – a little blonde girl just like me – standing in the crowd beyond the gates of Graceland. I mourned with her that day, just as I celebrated with her in 1988 when she married her first husband Danny Keough – the father of her two oldest children, lifelong confidant and the person who tried to save her by performing CPR at the end. “Danny is my absolute best friend,” she said. “The smartest thing I ever did is have children with this man because I knew this is the one man I could be connected to for the rest of my life.”

I related to the love she had for her always-devoted mother, Pricilla. I watched with curiosity when she married Michael Jackson – probably the only person on the planet who could create his own reality like her father did. And I was disappointed when he manipulated her for his own gain – much like others would do over the years. From third husband Nichols Cage, a huge Elvis fan and collector who married his way into seeing the off-limits upstairs rooms at Graceland where Elvis died, to fourth husband Michael Lockwood, the father of her 14-year-old twins who battled her for money and custody in a contentious divorce, to the fraudulent business managers who wiped out her bank accounts, it seemed everyone had a hand in her pocket.

Something about Lisa Marie made me feel that if we ever had the oportunity, we’d be fast friends. She seemed like all the other people I’m pulled to – brooding and vulnerable with a story to tell; loyal, authentic and fierce. I wanted to help her. I wanted to have sleepovers at Graceland and drive custom golf carts in the pastures. I wanted to complement her on her mascu-fem suits and husky voice. I wanted to see her prevail and be happy. 

I was planning a trip to Graceland with my real friend and had been keeping tabs on the estate via the Graceland webcam for weeks. I became overly-invested in all the events happening there – including Elvis’ birthday celebration featuring Lisa Marie on January 8, 2023. When I saw her unsteady on her feet wearily greeting a demanding crowd and listened to her shaky-voiced speech, I felt pangs of panic. It was a gloomy day in Memphis. The trees at Graceland were bare and haunting. It seemed foreboding and Lisa Marie looked really unwell. I texted my friend… “I’m afraid Lisa may die.” My friend thought I was exaggerating, which I have a tendency to do. But only four days later, Lisa Marie Presley was gone.

Lisa Marie was born into celebrity. She didn’t choose it. Her life was on display whether she wanted it to be or not. She was never free from comparisons or criticisms. She was a strong songwriter who used her craft as an attempt to exercise her demons, but she never got the chance to prove herself to herself.

She tried. She kept trying. But she endured more grief and pain and generational trauma than most people ever will, and it was all under a spotlight. The death of her son Benjamin in 2020 seemed to be the final blow. In an essay for National Grief Awareness Day in 2022 she wrote, “Grief does not stop or go away in any sense. It’s something you carry for the rest of your life. 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.”

The reason I wanted to visit Graceland was not because it once was Elvis’ home, but because it was still Lisa Marie’s home. It was a connection to the past. Hers. Mine. America’s. But the magic and potential Gr​aceland once held has dissipated like the people who brought it to life. I fear it’s now just a house. The Presley’s have left the building.

Graceland will be passed to Lisa Marie’s daughters, actress Riley Keough and Harper and Finely Lockwood. I hope they are good stewards of the mansion and that they break the cycle of misfortune to overcome and thrive in a way their mother never could.

Death is not glamorous, but there is something poetic about coming full circle. In her final days, Lisa Marie went home to Graceland. She walked the estate. She was there with her grief counselor. She visited the graves of her relatives and contemplated her own mortality. She celebrated her father’s revival and the hit movie about his life with the people she loved most. Afterward, she went to the house she shared with the one man who always had her back. She said goodbye to her twins as they left for school that morning. Then her heart, too damaged to carry the weight of all it endured, finally broke. 

On January 22, Lisa Marie made her last trip home to rest in the Meditation Garden like she always knew she would – protected and secure behind Graceland's gates for all eternity. 

The lights are out.

*February 2024 Update: I made the trek to Graceland to see the Lisa Marie Presley exhibit. Photos on right.

January 15, 2023

Opening the front door to Graceland on my visit. 

First three photos from the Graceland Lisa Marie Exhibit

by Cynthia Gunnells

Lisa Marie Presley: Graveyards and Graceland Revisited

Meditation Garden