Warning: This story contains mentions of suicide.

Lisa Marie Presley was so overcome with grief after the death of her son Benjamin Keough that she kept his body in dry ice in her home for two months. According to NBC, the shocking revelation is included in the new memoir, From here to the great unknownwhich daughter, Daisy Jones and the Six star Riley Keough, completed after the death of her mother at the age of 54 in January 2023.

“My mother had my brother in our home instead of keeping him in the morgue,” Keough wrote in the book. “They told us that if we could take care of the body, we could have him at home, so they kept him in our house on dry ice for a while.”

Keough said it was important that her mother – the only child of late rock legend Elvis Presley – had enough time to say goodbye to her son, who died by suicide in 2020. “Just like she had done with her father. And I would sit there with him,” she said, noting that California has no laws dictating exactly when a body should be buried or disposed of. Keough used archival tapes of her mother’s memories to complete the book.

“My house has a separate casitas bedroom, and I kept Ben Ben there for two months,” said Presley, who had begun work on the memoir before her death; Presley died of a small intestinal obstruction caused by complications from a previous weight-loss surgery. “There is no law in the state of California that says you have to bury someone immediately. I have found a very empathetic funeral home owner,” Presley wrote. “I told her that having my father around after he died was incredibly helpful because I could spend time with him and talk to him. She said, “We’re bringing Ben Ben (her nickname for her son) to you. You can have him there. ”

She added: “I think it would scare the living f-ing p-ss out of anyone else if their son was there like that. But not me.” Lisa Marie was nine years old when Elvis died in 1977.

The room where Benjamin’s body was allegedly kept at 55 degrees and Presley and Keough received tattoos that matched Benjamin’s from an artist who came to their home. When asked if they had pictures of the piece they wanted to replicate, Lisa Marie told him, “No, but I can show you,” referring to the ink Benjamin had on his collarbone with Keough’s name and another on his hand with Presley’s name; the mother and daughter had Benjamin’s name tattooed on the matching parts of their bodies.

Despite the unusual rules the Presleys followed, Keough said the tattoo incident was one of the most bizarre she had ever experienced. “Lisa Marie Presley had just asked this poor man to look at the body of her deceased son, which happened to be right next to us in the casitas. “I’ve had an extremely absurd life, but this moment is in the top five,” she wrote.

Shortly afterwards, one of Keough’s brothers made it clear that he no longer wanted the body in the house and Keough, channeling her deceased sibling, imagined how he would have watched the scene. “Guys,” he seemed to say, “this is getting weird.” Even my mother said she felt him talking to her and said, ‘This is crazy, Mom, what are you doing? What the f—!’” Keough said.

According to Peoplethe book describes how the family held a funeral service for Benjamin in Malibu and Keough placed a pair of her yellow Nikes that her brother had always loved in the casket. In an earlier interview with People Before the book’s release, Keough revealed, “My mother died physically from her surgery, but we all knew she died of a broken heart.”

Both Presley and her son are buried in Graceland, where Elvis is also buried.