Celebrities pay tribute to Lisa Marie Presley 1:23
(CNN) --
Lisa Marie Presley loved being the mother of her "pups."
This is how the singer-songwriter who died this Thursday, at the age of 54, referred to when talking about her four children —daughters Riley, Finley and Harper, and her son Benjamin— in a 2019 publication on her verified Instagram account.
His love for his children was palpable.
In a 2012 interview with The Guardian, Presley noted that "having all my children" was the happiest time of her life after growing up at Graceland, as the only daughter of superstar Elvis Presley.
For this reason, she said that she felt devastated when Benjamin died by suicide in 2020, at the age of 27.
Presley's last post in August 2022 directed his followers to an essay he had written for National Grief Awareness Day, which was published by People magazine "in the hope that anyone who needs to hear all This will help her in some way."
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Who was Lisa Marie Presley: singer and only daughter of Elvis Presley
In the essay, Presley said she had "been living in the horrible reality of [grief's] unrelenting grip since the death" of her son two years ago, and then shared her feelings about grief and loss.
Lisa Marie Presley and her daughters.
"Death is a part of life, whether we like it or not, and so is mourning," he wrote.
"There's a lot to learn and understand on the subject, but here's what I know so far: One is that grief doesn't stop or go away in any sense, one or more years after the loss."
“Pain is something that you will have to carry with you for the rest of your life, despite what certain people or our culture would have us believe,” Presley added.
"You don't 'get over it,' you don't 'move on,' period."
Benjamin was the son she had with her first husband, musician Danny Keough, who is also the father of her daughter, Riley, 33, a successful actress.
Twins Finley and Harper, 14, are from Presley's last husband, musician and producer Michael Lockwood, whom she divorced in 2016.
"I'm still fighting for my daughters," Presley wrote in her essay.
Lisa Marie Presley children
“I keep going because my son made it very clear in his last moments that taking care of his little sisters and watching over them was at the forefront of his concerns.
He absolutely adored them and they him,” she wrote.
“My life and that of my three daughters as we knew it was completely detonated and destroyed by his death.
We live in this situation day after day."
Since then, Presley has leaned on the relationship with his daughters.
In a post he made for his birthday on February 1, he wrote, "Like every day, I couldn't have done it without these three by my side," in a photo of them together.
However, her beloved son was never far from her thoughts.
In July 2022, she shared a photo of matching tattoos that she and Benjamin had on their feet.
“Several years ago, on Mother's Day, my son and I got these tattoos on our feet.
It is a Celtic eternity knot.
It symbolizes that we will be forever connected,” the caption on the Instagram photo of him read.
“We carefully chose it to represent our everlasting love and everlasting bond.”
Presley told The Guardian in 2012 that what he feared most was death.
After she died, she added Presley, she would like to be remembered "mainly as a good mother, and a pretty good singer-songwriter."
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