A Worried Lisa Marie Presley Frequently Told Elvis, ‘I Don’t Want You to Die’
By the 1970s, Elvis Presley’s drug use was concerning everyone around him, including his young daughter, Lisa Marie Presley. He relied on a variety of medications every day and his health began to suffer from it. Lisa Marie recalled being able to pick up on the fact that something was wrong. She shared the heartbreaking thing she said to Elvis as a result.
Lisa Marie Presley worried about Elvis’ wellbeing
Lisa Marie was still a young child when Elvis died, but his drug use was apparent to her. She became concerned about his well-being.
“One night when I was five or six, we were watching TV,” Lisa Marie said in the book The Colonel by Alanna Nash. “I looked up at him and said, ‘Daddy, Daddy, I don’t want you to die.’ And he just looked at me and said, ‘Okay, I won’t. Don’t worry about it.’”
She recalled saying this to him more than once. Even at her young age, she could tell she should be concerned about her father.
“I said that to him several times when we were alone together,” she said. “I guess I was picking something up.”
Lisa Marie Presley recalled the final words Elvis said to her
Lisa Marie was staying with Elvis at Graceland when he died. She was one of the final people to see him alive.
“I don’t like talking about this,” she said in 2012, per Express. “It was August 16th, at 4 am. I was supposed to be asleep, actually. He found me, you know.”
Elvis told Lisa Marie to go to sleep before tucking her in and kissing her goodnight. This was the last time she saw him alive. She said that when she awoke, she could tell something was wrong.
“I knew something was wrong,” she said. “Because I was in my room which was right next to his bathroom. So I knew that something was very wrong. All the commotion and everything. I was a wreck.”
She took 1 item from her father’s closet
After Elvis’ death, Lisa Marie continued to spend time at Graceland. When she visited the house after his death, Graceland staff noticed a change in her. She tried to avoid the upstairs entirely. The only time Graceland maid Nancy Rooks could recall Lisa Marie going upstairs was when she wanted something from Elvis’ closet.
“I noticed a change in her, however, whenever she came to the house after his passing,” Rooks wrote in her book Inside Graceland: Elvis’ Maid Remembers. “The only time I remember her going upstairs was one time, several years after he had died, when she asked me to go up to his bedroom with her.”
She picked out a simple item to remind herself of her father.
“She got very quiet as we entered the room, and stopped, looked around for a few minutes, and then went over and got a black and white ballcap from his closet and walked out of the room with it,” Rooks wrote. “I think that just knowing that her father had died up there was too much for her. I guess it would be for most children her age.”
How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357.
