Priscilla Presley says it’s “amazing” how fast her twin granddaughters are growing up

Priscilla Presley has told how she can’t believe how fast her twin granddaughters Harper and Finley Lockwood are growing up.

Priscilla, 79, told People on Saturday that she found it “amazing” that they are now 16, as she continues to “see them as little children”.

The ex-wife of the late Elvis Presley chatted with the outlet at the Last Chance for Animals 40th Anniversary Gala held in Los Angeles at Paramount Studios, and told the outlet that the twins, whose father is the musician Michael Lockwood, 63, is “fun”. to be with.’

Priscilla, mother to the late Lisa Marie Presley, who died last year aged 54, and grandmother to actress Riley Keough, 35, celebrated her granddaughters’ high school graduation in an Instagram post of June 2023.

Happy graduation girls! Now you’re in high school!!!’ said Priscilla, who posed for a picture with the twins and Keough, as they reached a legal settlement over Lisa Marie’s estate settlements.

Priscilla Presley, 79, has told how she can’t believe how fast her twin granddaughters Harper and Finley Lockwood are growing up. Pictured Saturday at the Last Chance for Animals 40th Anniversary Gala held in LA at Paramount Studios

The ex-wife of the late Elvis Presley said the twins, whose father is musician Michael Lockwood, 63, are “fun to be with”.

Priscilla, who has appeared in films including The Naked Gun trilogy and The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, welcomed the twins “for a period” as Lisa Marie and Lockwood battled for custody of the girls after their divorce in 2016, ending their divorce. decades of marriage.

According to the post, Priscilla and the twins spent time with each other amid the coronavirus pandemic by fostering puppies.

Lisa Marie, with ex-husband Danny Keough, was also mother to Riley and late son Benjamin Keough, who tragically committed suicide in 2020, something Riley said her late mother never emotionally recovered from.

It’s been an eventful month for the famous family, as Harper and Finley celebrated their 16th birthday on October 7, a day before the release of their mother Lisa Marie’s posthumous memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, written in part by Riley.

Riley quickly agreed to help complete her mother’s memoir and thought they would write it together, reflecting on her extraordinary upbringing and life, but it became a much bigger responsibility after Lisa Marie’s sudden death in 2023.

Finishing the task that her mother, the only daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley and a recording artist in her own right, had started years earlier brought “all kinds of emotions,” Keough told The Associated Press before the publication of the book.

“It felt like a duty I had to fulfill for her,” Riley said. “I’m glad it’s done and it’s out in the world and out there for people to read.”

From Here to the Great Unknown is named after the poignant lyrics of Presley’s Where No One Stands Alone, a song that Lisa Marie recorded as a duet with her father more than 50 years after launch it for the first time and more than 40 years after his death.

Priscilla said the twins, pictured years ago with older sister Riley Keough, are “fun to be around”.

Priscilla posed in a picture from June 2023 with the twins and Riley, when she and Riley reached a legal settlement over Lisa Marie’s estate settlements.

Priscilla welcomed the twins “for a period” as Lisa Marie and Lockwood battled for custody of the girls following their divorce in 2016, ending their decade-long marriage.

Priscilla and the twins spent time with each other amid the coronavirus pandemic by fostering puppies, according to the publication

The book, which is the latest selection from Oprah Winfrey’s book club, deals with themes of “love and loss and grief and mothers and daughters and addiction,” Riley said, adding that it was conceived as a way for Lisa Marie to tell her story. words and connect with others.

Much of the book is actually in Lisa Marie’s words, as Riley faithfully listened to recordings of her mother recounting memories and experiences both big and small. Lisa Marie wrote openly about the day her father died, her relationship with her mother, her marriage to Michael Jackson, her struggles with addiction and the death of her son Benjamin in 2020, among many others parts of his life.

Although Lisa Marie’s life had been tabloid fodder since days after her birth, her memoir details intimate moments at Graceland, including how she feared for Presley’s health when he was young. In the chapter titled He’s Gone, she wrote that as a child she often worried about her father dying and even wrote a poem with the line “I hope my father doesn’t die”.

He also wrote that Graceland became a “free-for-all” on the day Presley died in 1977, with those in the house taking jewelry and personal items “before he was even pronounced dead.”

Lisa Marie’s candid writing extends to the section focusing on her marriage to Jackson from 1994 to 1996. She wrote that Jackson confessed his love to her while she was still married to Keough, and that he wanted children with her , together with her. with his growing dependence on prescription drugs, is what fractured their relationship.

Riley said hearing her mother’s voice on the recordings was “heartbreaking” at times, but she enjoyed hearing happy memories, like how her parents met and fell in love.

“It makes me want to tell everybody to talk to their parents and record them telling all the stories about how they met and all that stuff because it’s great to have,” she said.

Riley’s role was to fill in parts of Lisa Marie’s story that she hadn’t gotten to before her death in January 2023 from a small bowel obstruction caused by bariatric surgery she had years earlier. Some of those gaps included lighter moments and happy memories of her mother’s adult life.

Priscilla was pictured with actor Corey Feldman at Saturday’s event in Southern California

“Up until my mother’s addiction, really, which was when she was 25, I think we would all say we had a very beautiful, exceptionally lucky and wonderful life,” Riley said. “I would not define our lives, collectively, as a tragedy. I think there is much more.

And while those more fun and light-hearted moments, like Lisa Marie driving through Graceland in her golf cart and Keough playing at school to hang out with her mom, are detailed throughout the book, Keough said that Lisa Marie wanted to write about grief and loss. of his son

Writing about her experience grieving her brother and detailing his death by suicide “wasn’t something that felt very natural” to Riley, but she said she knew her mother wouldn’t have shied away. Lisa Marie wrote that she wanted to honor her son by sparking frank conversations about suicide, addiction and mental health.

‘How do I heal?’ Lisa Marie writes in the book. ‘Helping people’.

For Riley, much of her life now has revolved around learning to live with the pain and dealing with the monumental losses she has faced.

“My last four years have just been pain, like so much pain,” Riley said. “But it’s just something I walk around with. You just get heartbroken, and that’s just the way it is, and you just learn to live with these holes and the sadness and the pain and the love and the longing and the missing and the confusion and all that.

‘It’s very complicated. I think you just have to try and allow it to be there.”