43 pages • 1-hour read
Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis
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Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, substance use, addiction, and child sexual abuse.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Keeping the Faith”
After Elvis’s mom had died years prior, Elvis started reading philosophical and spiritual texts and searching for answers. He would often read aloud to Priscilla, but she hadn’t related to these ideas. However, after Elvis died, Priscilla found herself looking for meaning. For a while, she went to the Self-Realization Fellowship’s Mother Center, where she’d been with Elvis; but she soon found that she needed something more. This is when she found Scientology, through actor John Travolta, a long-time Scientologist. The group’s message spoke to her and helped her through her grief. She became invested in the community and her own path to self-enlightenment. Soon, Priscilla was bringing Lisa Marie to the Church of Scientology. She wanted something to heal their relationship, ease Lisa Marie’s grief, and to help her daughter grow as a person. Family life was still a struggle, as Lisa Marie wasn’t used to being raised solely by Priscilla.
Then in 1979, Elvis’s dad, Vernon, died, leaving Graceland to Priscilla. Although honored, Priscilla was horrified by the estate’s messy finances. She was determined not to sell the property and sought the help of financial advisors and friends. Finally, with the help of Jack Soden, she decided “to open Graceland to the public” (73). The estate remains one of the most visited historic homes in the country and has been a lasting tribute to Elvis. Priscilla still loves being there, too, as she can feel Elvis’s presence in the space.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Suspicious Minds”
Lisa Marie struggled after Elvis’s death. The world saw her as Elvis’s daughter and it was hard to shape her own identity. Lisa Marie was feisty and stubborn like Elvis, too. She often refused to go to school and soon became “preoccupied with boys” (79). Priscilla struggled to give her daughter the upbringing and values she’d wanted to instill.
Priscilla started dating Michael Edwards. This was the most serious relationship she’d had since leaving Elvis. Michael soon moved in with Priscilla despite her family and friends’ objections. Priscilla admits she didn’t see Michael’s bad traits because he was so charming. Over the years, however, the relationship began to fracture. She knew he was cheating on her and felt frustrated by his flings, but didn’t want to confront him. She feared ruining their seemingly perfect family life with Lisa Marie and Michael’s daughter from a previous relationship. Over time, however, Michael’s behavior became increasingly erratic, particularly when he was drinking. He would get jealous and turn into a different person.
Then, when Lisa Marie was 14, she told Priscilla that Michael had come into her room while she was sleeping one night, lifted her nightgown, and looked at her. Priscilla was horrified and demanded to know if anything else happened, but Lisa insisted it hadn’t. Priscilla worried that this had been going on for some time and decided to leave Michael. When she told Lisa Marie, her daughter begged for Michael to stay. Priscilla felt caught between protecting and wounding her daughter. She ended up following her gut and ending the relationship.
In her posthumous memoir published in 2024, Lisa Marie revealed that Michael had indeed molested her for many years. A devastated Priscilla regrets never being able to talk to her daughter about the truth. Michael also published a tell-all memoir wherein he admitted his feelings for Lisa Marie.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Acting Out”
After Priscilla left Michael, Lisa Marie’s attitude and behavior worsened. Lisa Marie started drinking and using drugs heavily, which worried Priscilla, given her genetic propensity for addiction. She sent Lisa to a private school in Ojai, California, in hopes that Lisa would shape up and invest in her education.
Priscilla pursued an acting career. She recounts her experiences in acting class and her first roles. She loved being on the documentary series Those Amazing Animals and was honored to be given a role on the soap opera Dallas, where she had good relationships and learned a lot. She was surprised by how fun she found acting and how kind people were to her.
While Priscilla was thriving, Lisa Marie struggled. She used drugs and failed out of school. A worried Priscilla moved her to a new private school closer to home and enrolled her in Scientology’s rehab program. Lisa Marie made a few friends, including Danny Keough, a devout Scientologist and musician. Priscilla was thrilled because Danny seemed like a good influence on her daughter.
Priscilla let Lisa Marie drop out of school and move into her own place when she turned 18. Priscilla missed having her daughter at home, but was glad that Lisa Marie seemed more stable. She reflects on the difficulties of raising her daughter, particularly in light of Elvis’s legacy.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Love Me Tender”
Priscilla began dating Marco Garibaldi when Priscilla started appearing on Dallas; the couple would stay together for 22 years. Not long after Lisa Marie moved out, Priscilla got pregnant with her son, Navarone. She loved being a mom to a baby again, particularly because she was more ready this time. Shortly thereafter, she and Marco married.
Priscilla continued acting. She describes working on the Naked Gun movie series, which were fun projects. She muses on how Elvis would have responded to them.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
Priscilla frames her life after Elvis’s death as a matter of Navigating Fame, Public Expectation, and Legacy. Because Elvis was such an icon, and because his death affected people around the whole world, Priscilla struggled to grieve his passing in a way that felt true to her. By the time of his death, Priscilla hadn’t been married to Elvis for several years, but she remained associated with his fame and legacy. She continued to live in the shadow of the public’s expectations of her. To deal with her feelings of grief and entrapment, Priscilla turned to spirituality and religion. The Church of Scientology offered her comfort and a pathway to healing and self-empowerment, by teaching her that her life was her own:
The thought of freeing myself from all the pain and confusion of losing Elvis gave me hope. I wanted to take control of my life. I would not only be leaving the past behind but also be guided as I moved forward in life. Scientology would show me the way, step by step (64).
As a public figure, Priscilla felt limited by how outsiders saw her and how the media represented her. She felt compelled to respond to Elvis’s death in the way others expected. With the help of her new religious beliefs and community, Priscilla discovered how to exercise her agency despite the pressure she felt. She now considers that by looking to philosophy and religion, Priscilla was actually upholding Elvis’s legacy, too. “Elvis was always the searcher” (61), Priscilla asserts, and was always seeking answers to navigate his losses. Priscilla didn’t adopt Elvis’s same beliefs, but she did take inspiration from his quest for meaning.
Priscilla’s parenting experiences introduce the Generational Nature of Trauma that the memoir investigates. Much like her late father, Lisa Marie “was a conundrum, complicated and challenging,” “a free spirit, a determined and restless soul” (77). While Priscilla appreciated that Lisa Marie was grieving her father, she struggled to help her daughter build healthy habits and find direction in life. Elvis’s premature death wounded Priscilla in the same way that Gladys’s early death deeply impacted a young Elvis. Priscilla noticed other similarities between father and daughter, particularly Lisa Marie’s use of drugs and alcohol. Priscilla began to worry about her daughter when she discovered that Lisa Marie had been “experiment[ing] with alcohol and pot” and “that cocaine and other serious drugs were readily available in her social circles” (93). Priscilla never suggests that she didn’t trust Lisa Marie, but she feared Lisa Marie would become reliant on substances because of “Elvis’s history of addiction” (93). Of course, what Priscilla claims never to have known is Lisa Marie’s history of being sexually abused from a young age—trauma that could more readily explain the young woman’s substance use as a coping mechanism. Despite her best efforts, Priscilla was unable to stop her daughter from using substances. Priscilla similarly tried to stop Elvis’s drug use, but without success. These repeating patterns convey how trauma can echo from one generation to the next.
Priscilla’s romantic relationships and personal endeavors further the memoir’s theme of Discovering Personal Autonomy and Self-Empowerment. After losing Elvis, Priscilla could have descended into despair. She could have given up on her daughter or retreated from public life. Instead, Priscilla she describes herself pressing forward, allowing other men into her heart, discovering Scientology and beginning acting—experiences that were solely her decision and not the result of Elvis’s influence over her choices. Her first acting class particularly empowered her, bolstered her confidence, and helped her reclaim her life: “The experience had broken me out of my shyness, my fear of being watched” (96). Priscilla was learning how to balance her public and private lives, and discovering how to feel strong and capable in all arenas no matter how others might perceive her.
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