Priscilla Presley recalls daughter Lisa Marie 'was already gone' while on life support

Priscilla Presley is opening up about the heartbreaking decision to take her daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, off of life support two years ago.

"It was the second saddest day of my life, other than losing Elvis,” Priscilla told People Magazine for their cover story this week. “It took a long time to come to terms with the fact that Lisa was gone.”

Lisa Marie died at age 54 on Jan. 12, 2023, from a small bowel obstruction that developed after bariatric surgery she’d had years prior.

Her ex-husband, Danny Keough, found her unresponsive at home and contacted Priscilla to meet them at the hospital.

"We were there all day long," she recalled. "Lisa really wasn't breathing, so she was on the ventilator. For hours we were there waiting, hoping and praying until the doctor came in and said, 'Priscilla, I'm so sorry, she's gone.' We just couldn't believe it — didn't want to believe it. It was hard on all of us, it still is."

Priscilla shared an excerpt from her memoir, “Softly, as I Leave You: Life After Elvis,” with the outlet, writing, “I knew from the first moment I walked into Lisa’s hospital room that she was already gone. She was hooked to a machine that was breathing for her, and she had a heartbeat. There was little brain activity. Her spirit, always so vital, wasn’t there.

She continued, “Riley later told us that while she was still on her flight, she had felt her mother’s spirit pass. But none of us was ready to give up yet.”

The 80-year-old shared that family visited, barely eating, and hearing a code blue alert that Lisa Marie’s heart had stopped.

Doctors restarted her daughter’s heart, but “there was no guarantee it would keep beating. I asked the doctor, ‘What kind of life will she have if we keep her on that machine?’”

The doctor told her, “no quality of life at all,” and she wrote, “I thought about my girl, my wild, rebellious, passionate girl, lying in a vegetative state for the rest of her life. I said what I had to. ‘Take her off the machine, Doctor.’ My voice was barely above a whisper.”

“Softly, as I Leave You: Life After Elvis” will be released on September 23.