The day Elvis Presley buried his heart with his mother, Gladys Presley the funeral that killed the King

The day Elvis Presley buried his heart with his mother. The funeral that killed the king. Memphis, Tennessee. August 14th, 1958. 3:15 p.m. The telegram reached Elvis Presley at Ray Barracks in Freedberg, Germany, where he was serving in the US Army. His hands shook so violently as he read it that the paper tore at the edges.

 Your mother critically ill. Heart failure. Come home immediately. Elvis dropped the telegram and let out a sound that witnesses would describe as inhuman. A whale of anguish so raw, so primal that grown men turned away, unable to bear it. He collapsed to his knees in the middle of the barracks, crying, “Mama, mama, mama, mama!” over and over until his voice gave out.

 By the time Elvis boarded the emergency military transport back to the United States, Glattis Love Presley was already gone. She had died at 3:15 a.m. on August 14th, the exact moment Elvis had awakened in Germany with an overwhelming sense of dread, knowing without being told that something terrible had happened.

 He was 23 years old, and the only person who had ever truly loved him, not Elvis Presley, the star, but Elvis Aaron Presley, the boy, was dead. What happened in the 72 hours between that telegram and Glattis’s funeral would break Elvis Presley in ways he would never recover from. This is the story of how a son’s grief killed the king 19 years before his body finally gave out.

 To understand what Glattis’s death meant to Elvis, you have to understand what Glattis meant to Elvis. She wasn’t just his mother. She was his twin soul, his protector, his only source of unconditional love in a world that wanted to own him. They had a bond that went beyond normal parent child relationships, a connection forged in poverty, loss, and shared dreams.

Glattis had given birth to twins on January 8th, 1935. In a two- room shotgun shack in Tupelo, Mississippi, Jesse Garin was still born. Elvis Aaron survived. From that moment, Glattis poured all the love she had for two sons into the one who lived. “You were meant to live for both of you,” she would tell Elvis.

 “You’ve got to be twice as good, twice as strong. You’ve got your brother’s strength inside you, too. Growing up, they were inseparable.” Vernon, Elvis’s father, was often absent. Working when he could find work, in prison when he couldn’t. It was Glattis and Elvis against the world. They slept in the same bed until Elvis was in his teens.

 They had their own language, their own jokes, their own world that nobody else could enter. When Elvis got famous, when the money started flowing and the screaming fans appeared, Glattis was terrified. She saw what fame was doing to her boy, pulling him away from her, turning him into something that belonged to the world instead of to her.

 “She used to cry,” recalled Lilian Smith, Glattis’s sister. She’d say, “I’m losing my baby. I’m losing him to all those people.” She knew the world would take him from her eventually. She just didn’t know it would happen so soon. By 1958, Glattis’s health was deteriorating rapidly. She developed hepatitis, likely from chronic alcohol abuse, a way of numbing the pain of watching her son become Elvis Presley.

 Her heart was failing. At 46, she looked 20 years older, her body destroyed by anxiety, drinking, and the weight of knowing she was losing the only thing that mattered to her. When Elvis got drafted in March 1958, it nearly destroyed Glattis. The army was taking her baby to Germany, thousands of miles away, where she couldn’t protect him, couldn’t see him, couldn’t make sure he was eating enough or sleeping enough or safe.

 “Don’t make me go, Mama.” Elvis had begged her before he left. I’ll pay whatever it takes. I’ll find a way out of it. Baby, you have to go, Glattis said, though it was killing her. People will think you think you’re too good to serve. But you come back to me, you hear? You promise me you’ll come back. I promise, Mama.

 I promise. Elvis left for Germany in October 1958. Two weeks later, Glattis was admitted to Methodist Hospital in Memphis with acute liver failure and heart complications. She never told Elvis how sick she really was. In her letters, she was cheerful, optimistic, telling him she’d be fine, that he shouldn’t worry, that she’d be waiting for him when he came home.

 She was lying, she was dying, and she knew it. Elvis landed in Memphis on August 12th, racing from the airport directly to Methodist Hospital. When he walked into his mother’s room, what he saw destroyed him. Glattis was unrecognizable. Her face was swollen beyond recognition from liver failure. Her skin had a yellow jaundest tint.

 She was barely conscious, drifting in and out, sometimes not knowing where she was. But when Elvis walked in, her eyes focused. She knew him. “Baby,” she whispered. “My beautiful baby boy.” Elvis crawled into the hospital bed with her, holding her like he was a child again, like they were back in that shotgun shack in Tupelo.

 And nothing had changed. “I’m here, mama,” he sobbed.”I’m here. I came back like I promised.” “I know, baby. I knew you would.” They stayed like that for hours. Elvis refused to leave, refused to let go. Nurses tried to make him move so they could check her vitals, but he wouldn’t budge. “This is my mama,” he said, his voice breaking.

 “And I’m not leaving her.” At 3:15 a.m. on August 14th, with Elvis’s arms around her, Glattis Love Presley took her last breath. Elvis felt it happen. Felt the moment her spirit left her body, felt the sudden terrible emptiness where her presence had been. “No,” he whispered. “No, no, no, Mama. Please, please don’t leave me. Please.

But she was gone. Vernon had to physically pull Elvis away from Glattis’s body. Elvis was hysterical, incoherent, trying to crawl back to her, convinced that if he just held her tighter, loved her harder, she’d come back. “She’s gone, son.” Vernon said, crying himself. “She’s gone.” “No!” Elvis screamed.

 “She promised she’d wait for me. She promised.” It took three orderlys to get Elvis out of that hospital room. His screams echoed through the hallways. A sound of grief so profound that other patients started crying without knowing why. What happened in the next 48 hours became the stuff of Memphis legend. A young man’s descent into grief so total, so consuming that everyone who witnessed it was changed.

 Elvis refused to leave Graceand. He sat in Glattis’s room, holding her clothes, smelling her perfume, talking to her like she was still there. “I should have been here, mama,” he said to the empty room. “I should have stayed. The army didn’t need me, but you needed me, and I left you. I left you alone, and you died without me.

” He wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, just sat there hour after hour crying until he had no tears left, then crying anyway. Friends who came to pay their respects were disturbed by what they saw. This wasn’t normal grief. This was something darker, something that looked like it might consume Elvis entirely. He kept saying he wanted to die, recalled Red West, Elvis’s friend and bodyguard.

He kept saying, “I should be with her. I should be in that coffin instead of her. We had to watch him constantly because we were genuinely afraid he’d hurt himself.” The night before the funeral, Elvis demanded to see his mother one last time. Against all advice, against protocol, the funeral director agreed.

What happened in that funeral home at 2:00 a.m. has never been fully told. Because Elvis made everyone leave. He wanted to be alone with Glattis one final time. Janelle M come, the funeral director’s wife, was in the next room. She heard everything. He was talking to her, Janelle said in a 1994 interview. like she could hear him.

 He was telling her everything. How sorry he was, how much he loved her, how he didn’t know how to live without her. And then he started singing. He sang Danny Boy to her just like she used to sing it to him when he was little. It was the saddest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. When Elvis emerged from that room 3 hours later, something fundamental had changed in him.

 The light in his eyes was gone. He looked hollow, emptied out like a shell of a person moving through the motions of being alive. August 16th, 1958. The funeral at Grace and. 3,000 people crowded the lawn. Another 10,000 lined the streets. Police had to set up barriers to control the crowds. Some came to mourn with Elvis.

 Others came to see the spectacle of Elvis Presley’s grief. Elvis wore his army uniform. He was pale, trembling, barely able to stand. He’d taken pills to get through the day, the first time he’d ever used prescription medication to cope with emotional pain. It wouldn’t be the last. The service was held in Graceand’s music room.

 Reverend James Hamill delivered the eulogy, but Elvis didn’t hear a word. He sat in the front row, staring at his mother’s coffin, his face blank, his mind somewhere else entirely. When it came time to view the body, Elvis stood and walked slowly to the coffin. What happened next shocked everyone present. Elvis leaned over and kissed his mother’s forehead.

 Then he started talking to her, oblivious to the hundreds of people watching. “I love you, mama,” he said, his voice breaking. “I love you so much. I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I let you down.” He was crying so hard he could barely speak. Vernon tried to pull him away, but Elvis shook him off.

 “Don’t take me away from her,” Elvis shouted. “She’s my mama. She’s my mama, and I’m not ready to say goodbye.” The entire room was crying. Not just family, but strangers, reporters, police officers, everyone. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Elvis allowed himself to be led away. But as they closed the coffin, Elvis lunged forward, trying to stop them. “Wait,” he screamed.

 “Wait, please, just one more minute. Just let me look at her one more time.” But the coffin was closed. Glattis was gone, and Elvis collapsed completely, sobbing so violently that he couldn’t breathe,  couldn’t stand, couldn’t function. They carried him out of his own mother’s funeral. The burial at Forest Hill Cemetery was worse.

 As they lowered Glattis’s coffin into the ground, Elvis lost control completely. “No!” he screamed, trying to throw himself into the grave. “Don’t put her in there. Don’t put her in the ground. She’s afraid of the dark. She’s afraid of being alone.” It took four men to restrain him. Elvis fought them like a wild animal, trying to get to his mother’s coffin, trying to stop them from burying her.

She needs me, he sobbed. She needs me and I’m leaving her here alone. Vernon finally grabbed Elvis by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes. Son, she’s not in there anymore. That’s just her body. Your mama’s spirit is with God now. She’s at peace. But I’m not, Elvis cried. I’m not at peace. How am I supposed to live without her? Vernon had no answer. Nobody did.

 As they shoveled dirt onto Glattis’s coffin, Elvis stood watching, silent now, tears streaming down his face. Something inside him breaking that would never be repaired. The aftermath of Glattis’s death changed Elvis forever. He returned to Germany to finish his military service, but he was a different person. The playful, optimistic young man who’d left was gone, and his place was someone darker, more closed off, unreachable.

 After his mother died, Elvis was never really happy again, said Priscilla Presley, who met Elvis in Germany just months after Glattis’s funeral. He smiled, he laughed, he performed. But there was this sadness underneath everything, like part of him had died with her, and he was just going through the motions of living.

 Elvis began using prescription medication regularly. Pills to sleep, pills to wake up, pills to perform, pills to cope. He told himself it was just to get through, but it was the beginning of the dependency that would eventually kill him. He also became obsessed with death. He read spiritual books constantly, searching for proof that Glattus still existed somewhere, that death wasn’t the end, that he’d see her again.

 He had this recurring dream, said Larry Geller, Elvis’s spiritual adviser in the 1960s. He dreamed that he was dying and his mother was waiting for him. He said those were the only good dreams he ever had because in them he got to be with her again. Elvis’s relationships with women became impossible. He was searching for Glattis in every woman he met.

 Someone who would love him unconditionally, who would put him first, who would never leave him. But no one could replace Glattis. No one could fill that void. His career soared in the 1960s, but Elvis took no joy in it. What’s the point? He’d say, “Mama’s not here to see it. She’s not here to be proud of me.

” For 19 years after Glattis’s death, Elvis walked through life carrying the weight of that loss. Every decision he made, every relationship he pursued, every performance he gave was colored by the absence of the one person who had truly mattered to him. On August 16th, 1977, 19 years to the day after Glattis’s funeral, Elvis Presley died in the bathroom at Graceand.

 He was 42 years old, the same age Glattis had been when she became sick. When they found his body, he was holding a book about the afterlife, a photo of Glattis bookmarking a page about being reunited with loved ones after death. Some of Elvis’s closest friends believe he willed himself to die. That after 19 years of living without his mother, he simply gave up.

 “Elvis died of a broken heart,” said Billy Smith, Elvis’s cousin. “Not in 1977.” “In 1958, it just took 19 years for his body to catch up with his spirit. Elvis was buried at Graceand in the meditation garden next to his mother. On his tombstone, the inscription reads, “He became a living legend in his own time, earning the respect and love of millions.

” But those who knew the truth understood that the only respect and love Elvis ever really cared about was Glattis’s. And when she died, so did the part of Elvis that wanted to live. The day Elvis buried his mother, he buried his heart with her. Everything that came after, the movies, the comeback, the Vegas years, the decline was just aftermath.

 Elvis Presley died on August 14th, 1958 at 3:15 a.m. in a Memphis hospital room, his arms around the only person who had ever really known him. The funeral didn’t kill the king. The funeral was just the ceremony for what was already gone.