Lisa Marie Presley Pens Essay About Son’s Death: “Nothing Takes Away The Pain”

Lisa Marie Presley‘s son, Benjamin Keough, died by suicide on July 12, 2020 in Calabasas, California. He was 27 years old.

Now, two years after her beloved son’s passing, Lisa Marie has penned an emotional essay about her grief. She shared this essay with PEOPLE in honor of “National Grief Awareness Day” on Tuesday (August 30).

Lisa Marie started her essay by sharing three things she has learned so far about grief. She said:

“One is that grief does not stop or go away in any sense, a year, or years after the loss…Two, grief is incredibly lonely…Three, and particularly if the loss was premature, unnatural, or tragic, you will become a pariah in a sense. You can feel stigmatized and perhaps judged in some way as to why the tragic loss took place. This becomes magnetized by a million if you are the parent of a child who passed. No matter how old they were. No matter the circumstances.”

Lisa Marie said great comfort can be found in grief support groups, especially groups made up of people who have experienced a similar loss to your own. Although this support can help, Lisa Marie says nothing can ever completely erase the pain of grief.

“Nothing, absolutely NOTHING takes away the pain, but finding support can sometimes help you feel a little bit less alone,” she wrote.

Lisa Marie explained how she is not new to grief, since her father Elvis Presley died when she was just a child:

“I’ve dealt with death, grief and loss since the age of nine years old,” she said. “I’ve had more than anyone’s fair share of it in my lifetime and somehow, I’ve made it this far. But this one, the death of my beautiful, beautiful son? The sweetest and most incredible being that I have ever had the privilege of knowing, who made me feel so honored every single day to be his mother? Who was so much like his grandfather on so many levels that he actually scared me? Which made me worry about him even more than I naturally would have? No. Just no … no no no no …“

Lisa Marie said “it’s a real choice to keep going,” but she does so for the sake of her daughters: Riley, Harper, and Finley. “My and my three daughters’ lives as we knew it were completely detonated and destroyed by his death. We live in this every. Single. Day,” she said.

You can read Lisa Marie’s full essay here. She also directed people to visit Grief.com for more information about the grieving process and how to help those going through it.

As always, our hearts go out to Lisa Marie and her daughters.

If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.