I’m not one to get terribly upset by the death of a celebrity, but for some reason, the death of Lisa Marie Presley, blanketed me in a feeling of melancholy.
I didn’t know her, I wasn’t a follower of her music, but as a kid, I though she was the luckiest girl in the world. My parents were fans of Elvis and my dad took my mom to see him at the International Hotel in August 1969, a year before I was born. At that concert, my dad tipped the maitre’d really well and got a table near the stage. When Elvis was kissing the ladies, he urged my mom to go get a kiss from the King. Unfortunately, she was too shy for a smooch. Ugh.
I probably would have been just as nervous to go get a kiss. Elvis was a handsome devil who was larger than life. In 1976, I named my first pets, a couple of hamsters, Elvis and Priscilla. Unlike the real Elvis, hamster Elvis tragically ate his offspring, which the real Elvis would never do. I lost interest in hamster Elvis after that.
Real Elvis died the day before my birthday on August 16, 1977. I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news—planted, probably three inches away, in front of the boob tube surrounded by a sea of shag carpeting. He died young, not a member of the tragic 27 club, but at 42, which seems like a spring chicken to me now.
Lisa Marie was 54 when she died, just two years older than me, which makes me think that maybe she wasn’t the luckiest girl in the world. Her beloved son, Benjamin, took his own life in 2020 and she was grieving that loss, which she wrote about here.
The statement she made in that essay that resonated with me the most was this, “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.”
The truth of that statement hit me this week at the funeral of my friend’s mom. The second I sat down in that church, tears streamed and pooled into my mask. I couldn’t stop crying and this is soooooooooooo not me. Sure I felt empathy for my friend and her loss, but I didn’t know her mom, so the waterworks weren’t really for Ruth Eastland. Although she sounded like a hell of a gal and the service was beautiful.
This crying jag was all about the death of my own mom, who never got a funeral due to Covid after her death in October of 2020. As I sat in that pew, guilt and grief and anger bubbled up inside me in a jumble of confusion. My eyesockets were the only escape for the sadness, so I dabbed at them furiously with wadded up tissues, as my grief counselor’s voice echoed in my head, “feel your feelings.” So, I did. I sat there and I felt them. I cried, I wiped my tears, I blew my nose. At one point, I had to leave the room as I was about to have a coughing fit, which during a pandemic might cause some panic. My first instinct with all my crying was to be ashamed and go hide in the bathroom until the service was over, but I didn’t. I returned with fresh tissue to cry some more.
Grief is normal. It’s the price we pay for love. And to love and to know love is lucky.