A Little Thing Called Life

by Linda Thompson

  “Honey, I’m right here,” he said. “I love you. You’re just fine. You’re safe. You’re with me. You’ll always be safe with me.”

  For a moment it subsided. Then the panic rose within me again. Once more he held me and tried to quiet me. It went on like this for a while, until finally he convinced me to take a sleeping pill so that I could sleep it off.

  The next day I woke up and I was okay. It was later revealed to me that I had actually smoked Colombian hashish, which apparently is stronger than marijuana. To this day, I’ve never touched marijuana or hashish again.

  I was better in the short term, but for almost a year after that, I had random panic attacks. I never went to therapy or received any treatment for them, but I did self-analyze and get as much information about what had happened to me as I could. I read up on cannabis and learned how some people, especially if they don’t drink or do anything else mood or mind altering, and they’re not used to being out of control, suddenly feel like their consciousness is out of their own control and suffer ongoing panic attacks. That’s exactly what happened to me.

  In truth though, the lingering side effects of that night were far greater than periodic anxiety or anything physical. The incident marked a turning point in my hopes and dreams regarding a future life with Elvis. The lasting impact of that night was that for the first time I fully understood how little control I had over my own life. With my inhibitions eroded from the hash, I faced the oppressive reality of my situation with great clarity. Every nerve in my body was wound tighter than I had even realized. I was so consumed with trying to take care of Elvis, keep the peace, and accommodate his every emotion and need, while at the same time remaining vigilant to prevent him from accidentally overdosing and dying, that I had neglected to take care of my own needs. While he came and went as he pleased, free to sleep with any number of other women, I walked on eggshells to try to please and care for him. I didn’t fully realize the damage it was doing to my being until all my walls and defenses literally went up in smoke that night. Living like that came with a tremendous amount of pressure under which to breathe and survive. Not only was it unsustainable; it was becoming unbearable.

  Once this hard truth about my reality came to the surface, I could no longer pretend to myself that everything was fine in our relationship. I could no longer continue blindly hoping that one day down the line all the issues I had with him—his drug use, his infidelities, his need for total control and devotion to him—would suddenly resolve themselves. Something had to change and I knew that it wouldn’t be him.

  In the days following my first panic attack, I realized how desperately I needed to take back control of my life and my decision making. I could no longer hand over my complete heart, my identity, and relinquish my fate to someone else for safekeeping. Not even to Elvis Presley. From then on I started to pull away, slowly but surely, from my life with Elvis. I knew that it wouldn’t happen overnight and that my resolve would be tested repeatedly, but in my heart I knew it was necessary. I needed to reclaim what was intrinsically mine, and in the process find the strength to one day leave, even if that meant leaving part of my heart forever behind me.

  Chapter Nine

  Our Hospital Home

  Entering the third year of our love affair, as I began to consider the changes I needed to make in my life, I quickly came to see how difficult the process was going to be. Before I could gather my resolve, I was always called back into his arms and his whims, especially in his hours of need.

  When Elvis turned forty on January 8, 1975, he experienced a bit of what you might call a midlife crisis, becoming obsessed with the idea that he must undergo a facelift, immediately. My admonitions that he didn’t need anything done fell on deaf ears, and he began to spend long moments standing in front of the mirror, staring at himself with concern while pulling the skin at his jawline tauter and tauter. Any resulting difference was absolutely imperceptible, but he couldn’t get past his unhappiness with the alterations in his appearance that only he could perceive, and his mind was made up.

  He scheduled an appointment with a Memphis-based plastic surgeon, Dr. Asghar Koleyni, and went in for an appointment. The doctor also told Elvis that he was too young to require such a procedure, and he would prefer not to perform a facelift for Elvis. But Elvis was insistent, saying if this doctor wouldn’t do it, he’d find someone else who would. And so the doctor finally agreed to perform a minor surgery. I think he wanted to save Elvis from possibly getting butchered by a less moderate doctor somewhere else.

  Elvis checked into the doctor’s clinic at the MidSouth Hospital, and once again I stayed with him through the whole experience. Dr. Koleyni did a very subtle facelift, making incisions behind Elvis’s ears and pulling the skin back there. Thankfully, the procedure involved an easy recovery of only three or four days at the clinic, but Elvis was outfitted with a drainage tube beneath his chin. When he had recovered, the change to his appearance was indiscernible, but he seemed to feel better when he looked in the mirror. And so I suppose it did serve a positive purpose for him. There has been speculation through the years that Elvis had his eyes done or some other mystery procedure, but that mini facelift was the extent of his plastic surgery.

  While Elvis’s facelift and recovery were remarkably easy, his overall health noticeably declined again that month. He had put on weight, and he was often short of breath and unable to function at his best. In late January, he was transported from Graceland to the hospital, forcing him to cancel his usual winter engagement in Las Vegas. Among the reasons given in the press for his hospitalization were intestinal blockage and the flu. However, the underlying reason was to stabilize his system and prescription drug use.

  I again settled down for my inpatient stay by his side. Since this was our second hospital stay—our third if you counted his recuperation from his recent facelift—I knew what to anticipate. I quickly regained the sense of relief I’d experienced during our previous visit to Baptist Memorial, knowing that I could relax my constant vigil now that medical professionals would control his drug use and monitor his breathing. But it was still a difficult time, and as we were naturally drawn to do, we turned to each other for support.

  During this same time, my grandmother, Ninny, was gravely ill at another hospital, St. Joseph’s, in Memphis. I spent most days shuttling back and forth between the two hospitals, so I could visit with my grandmother, while also giving Elvis the nurturing he required. Ninny was the closest to my heart, other than my parents, and I felt an urgency to spend as much time as possible with her, especially as we knew the end of her life was growing near. I actually had the great privilege of being with her when she passed away. Holding her hand, I let her know how much she was loved, and that this love was going with her on her journey to eternity.

  Afterward I returned to Elvis, climbing up into the bed that he’d had them place right next to his in our shared hospital room, wanting the comfort and safety he could still provide so effortlessly when I was near him.

  “I want to take care of her funeral,” he said immediately after hearing the news. “Let me take care of it.”

  Elvis was well aware that my grandmother was poor and had resided in the Lauderdale Courts, the same housing project where he’d lived with his family as a teenager. Not only did Elvis pay for everything, but he also added the kind of special touches that really showed he cared, even getting Sherrill Nielsen and the Voice, who sang backup for him, to perform “Amazing Grace” and “I Come to the Garden Alone” at my grandmother’s funeral.

  For a time following Elvis’s hospital stay, our life together was again filled with energy and positivity. Elvis appeared to be clear and focused, and he appreciated my unwavering devotion to him, proudly boasting to the guys, “Linda was right there in the bed next to me the whole time I was in the hospital, man—that kind of love is hard to find.”

  Unfortunately, his health turnaround was short-lived. In March, seeming to be fully recovered, he return
ed to his normal activities with a two-week engagement at the Las Vegas Hilton, but he was battling his weight, and he and one of his regular Vegas doctors decided to try a radical diet plan. We left the Hilton and went to stay at this doctor’s house. As soon as we arrived, Elvis changed into his pajamas and climbed into bed in a spare bedroom.

  “Let’s just put you to sleep now,” the doctor said, giving Elvis a shot.

  What? I thought, trying to fathom what was unfolding around me. Elvis had told me that his doctor was putting him on a special diet, but this was way beyond anything I’d expected. For the next two weeks, the doctor had Elvis under near-constant sedation. During this time, Elvis was in bed sleeping except for a few brief periods each day when he woke up long enough to go to the bathroom and eat a small portion of food. Then he was sedated again and went back to sleep. Apparently, this really was the diet his doctor had devised for him.

  I felt like I’d stumbled into a backward reality where bizarre, unhealthy behavior was considered the norm. I couldn’t believe that a doctor was enabling this, but I knew better than to question or contradict Elvis. If he didn’t like my reaction, he would have simply sent me away. I was worried about him and wanted to be there to monitor his breathing and overall health. With the doctor gone during the day at his private practice, I stayed close by Elvis’s side, watching TV, reading, writing some poetry, for two weeks. Now that’s when I really went stir crazy. At least when we were sequestered together at the hotel, we could order room service, or go out onto the roof to sunbathe, or see other people at night.

  When I’d first stayed awake in the early days of our relationship, happily watching Elvis sleep beside me, I’d had no idea how much of my life this activity would come to occupy. Normally, I was still content to keep myself entertained in order to stay close to him while he dozed, making sure he was not in any danger. But with this situation, I’d found my patience tested to its limit. There was just something so extreme—and to my perspective, unhealthy—about his doctor’s decision to purposely render him unconscious for the better part of every day for two weeks. And perhaps I needed to show I wasn’t a willing participant to this surreal, fun-house reality.

  Finally, after we’d been there nearly the full two weeks, I couldn’t stand it anymore, knowing there was a whole world out there I was missing. The limousine came and took me to the Hilton, where I just walked around aimlessly. I didn’t even really do anything special when I got there. It wasn’t long before I began to worry Elvis might need me while I was away from him, and I returned to his side. Nevertheless, it was exhilarating to be free and have something other than the four walls of that guest room and Elvis’s sleeping face to look at. My brief moment of freedom had been sweet, and my decision to take this space for myself was a small step forward for me, even if there was no obvious change in my dealings with Elvis at the time. When Elvis was done with his “diet,” he had lost weight, not to mention muscle mass, and he seemed to think the entire experience was completely normal.

  As if his medically dubious choices weren’t concerning enough, Elvis’s dalliances with other women were getting harder to ignore. That spring and summer, Elvis toured quite a bit, and although I almost always accompanied him, it was no longer a given that I’d be traveling to every city with him on the road. On July 24, I joined him in Asheville, North Carolina, where he had given a show the night before as well. We were in our limo on the way to Elvis’s show when the driver turned around and handed me a ring.

  “Oh, ma’am, I think you dropped this ring last night,” he said.

  “Ah … ah … ah,” Elvis stammered, clearly unsure how to handle the fact that the limo driver had confused me with whatever woman Elvis had been with the previous evening.

  “Oh, thank you,” I said, as nicely as I could, feigning innocence as I took the ring and examined it.

  Elvis was sweating bullets and tried to explain, “Oh, honey, that’s mine. I must have dropped that last night.”

  “Yours?” I slyly implored, still examining it. “I dare think not,” I continued, using my best Eric Idle voice, raising my eyebrow to emphasize the clear connection between the ring and its original bearer. “This ring is a mere cheap imitation.”

  I couldn’t help but be a little amused at my own humor.

  Elvis relaxed a little, smiled, and said, “Naw, now honey, I think somebody gave it to me.”

  “I’ll bet she did,” I said.

  We never mentioned it again.

  As much as I tried to have a sense of humor about everything—and I managed to most of the time—I was so caught up in the emotions of the moment that I couldn’t see what was really going on. Looking back now, it’s clear that our relationship was deteriorating, and Elvis was getting more careless. Maybe he was exhausted from living a double life. Maybe he was reeling from the pills and beginning what we couldn’t see then was his final decline to the end of his life. Regardless, it meant an increasing number of messy moments for us.

  While Elvis had always preferred that we remain as isolated from the tabloid coverage of our lives as possible, it was harder to avoid seeing the glossy publications when we were on the road. By now, I was used to catching sight of pictures of Elvis and me in Las Vegas and outside other venues where he performed. But it was a terrible shock to my system to see him photographed with another woman he’d apparently been seeing. When I furiously confronted him, his response did nothing to alleviate my heartbreak.

  “I don’t know why you’re so upset by that; that was just a fun fling,” he said.

  Even worse was when he introduced this woman from onstage at the Hilton, as he’d done with me so many times in the past, leaving me not just heartbroken but humiliated.

  As generous as Elvis was, he would sometimes use his generosity to try to manipulate a situation, and me, even when I could see right through it. Once, when I was staying at the Monovale Drive house in Los Angeles, Elvis called me from Las Vegas.

  “Honey, I found the most unusual piece of jewelry,” he said, sounding excited. “I found the most unusual ring. I can’t wait to give it to you.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet, honey,” I said.

  “Yeah, I can’t wait to give it to you. It’s just so unusual. I’ve never seen one like it.”

  Of course, I didn’t need another ring and hadn’t been expecting him to give me anything, but he had made such a big fuss about this special ring, so I was curious. And on top of that, I was suspicious because I’d heard he was with this other girl in Vegas, the one he’d introduced from the stage. When he came back from Vegas, the ring was on my mind, but he didn’t say anything about it, and I didn’t want to be the one to mention it.

  The next day, he brought it up.

  “Honey, you remember I told you I had an unusual piece of jewelry for you?” he said, only this time he didn’t describe it as a ring specifically.

  “Oh yeah, I do remember that,” I said. “What happened to that?”

  “I’m going to get that for you,” he said, sounding guilty. “I’m going to send for that.”

  He dispatched a member of his entourage to pick up a piece of jewelry, and not long after that, he gave me a beautiful diamond bracelet.

  “Oh, I thought you said it was like something I’d never seen before?” I said. “Something really highly unusual.”

  “Well, at the time, I guess, I thought it was unusual,” he said evasively.

  “Honey, I love you, but I’m not stupid,” I said. “You also said it was a ring like you had never seen before. I know you gave that ring to somebody else. Because I heard you were—”

  “Well, what can I get you?” he interrupted me, sounding sheepish.

  “It’s not about that,” I said. “It’s not about that at all. You can’t get me anything to replace that. You didn’t have to buy it for me in the first place. It’s just knowing that something you got for me, you gave to someone else. That hurts my feelings. Whether it was a ring out of a Cracker Jack box or
something that you found unique.”

  I handed the bracelet back to him.

  “Thank you, I appreciate the gesture, but I don’t want something you bought out of guilt because you gave away to another girl what you specifically had in mind for me.” I got a lot of mileage out of that. He genuinely felt bad, I could tell, and he was on his best behavior for a short time. Well, at least when he was in my sight.

  In such moments of clarity, I could stand up for myself. As I began to learn to hold back a part of my heart for safekeeping, even from the man I loved, I found myself growing into a woman who would one day, soon enough, become self-sustainable. His unfaithfulness was now a given in our relationship, even though I’d never overtly agreed to this arrangement.

  Once or twice, the guys in his entourage even told me about his liaisons. As loyal as they were to him, I think the guys really loved me. We spent countless hours together because I was like the fourteenth steady guy in the crew. They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I took good care of Elvis, and it made their jobs easier. When I was around, they didn’t have to check on him every few minutes. And I appreciated when they came to me to talk about something related to his health and well-being because it reminded me that I wasn’t totally alone—there were others who were looking out for Elvis, too.

  And they knew that if I needed anything, like help after he’d taken too many sleeping pills and lay in a heap on the floor, I’d ask them for assistance in lifting him and getting him safely tucked back into his bed. I always respected their positions, which I think they could sense.

  I’ve often been asked, do you think the guys really cared about Elvis? And the answer to that is yes. They did—to a man. It would have been virtually impossible to spend that kind of time with Elvis without caring deeply about him. They all devoted their lives to Elvis, really. Many of them sacrificed their own marriages. Being on the road all the time, with women following them around, wasn’t conducive to a happy home life. And they didn’t get paid an exorbitant amount of money, considering what they gave up. Of course Elvis was generous, and they had many Peter Pan–like, fun-filled times when we all traveled together or spent time in Vegas. But they eventually had to go home, where they had missed time with their families and watching their children grow. Looking back, I can see how we were all living under this magical enchantment that caused us to put Elvis’s well-being before our own. And since we were kindred spirits in this experience, the guys looked out for me, and let me know they appreciated my caring for Elvis.