by Ginger Alden
I rushed over, bent down beside him and said, “Elvis?” A horrible fear shot through me.
His pajama top had slid forward a little because of his inclined position. I touched his lower back. His skin felt cool. Saying, “Elvis!” again, I gently turned his face toward me.
A hint of air expelled from his nose. The tip of his tongue was clenched between his teeth and his face was blotchy, with purple discoloration. I gently raised one eyelid. His eye was staring straight ahead and bloodred.
Frantic now, I quickly reached for the phone by the toilet and called downstairs. The maid Nancy answered.
In denial of what I was seeing, my only thought was, Don’t alarm anybody, Ginger. He’s going to be okay. But I heard the tremor in my voice as I asked Nancy which aide was on duty.
She hesitated a moment, then said, “Al Strada.”
“Send him up right away,” I said.
Al rushed to the top of the stairs. I met him in the hallway and cried, “I think something’s really wrong with Elvis!”
We ran into the bathroom. When Al saw Elvis, he mentioned something about a blood pressure kit and rushed to Elvis’s night table, with me on his heels. Bending down, he opened a door. When we glanced inside the cupboard and saw it was empty, we raced back to Elvis.
Al immediately called downstairs, and I realized Joe was in the house when Al asked for him. Moments later, Joe appeared in the doorway of the bathroom. Not wanting to be in the way, I knelt off to one side as he and Al turned Elvis over onto his back.
Elvis’s legs remained in a bent position, his feet not touching the floor. Al and Joe lifted him a little more toward the center of the bathroom and laid him in front of the counter.
I moved in closer as Joe lightly began to slap Elvis’s face. “Elvis, breathe!” he repeated urgently, while Al pressed on Elvis’s chest. Al and I joined in, begging Elvis to breathe.
Then Joe mentioned calling Dr. Nichopoulos. He stood up and went over to the phone on the wall. Glancing back at Elvis, Joe first called for an ambulance instead. He then tried Dr. Nichopoulos but didn’t reach him.
Al got on the phone, spoke with someone who I assumed was from Dr. Nichopoulos’s office and hung up, telling Joe that the person in the office was trying to locate the doctor by calling his pager. Joe tried calling the doctor again. Dr. Nichopoulos finally answered the page, then Joe phoned Vernon at his office. Charlie entered the room and joined in our pleas for Elvis to breathe.
Vernon arrived minutes later, accompanied by Sandy and Patsy. “Oh God, son, don’t die!” he pleaded. He looked as if he might collapse, and someone moved the book from the chair by the window and placed the chair by Elvis’s head for Vernon.
He sat down and shouted, “Breathe!” with the rest of us as Sandy tried giving Elvis mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Joe and Charlie had tried to pry open Elvis’s mouth, but it was clenched too tightly shut. Feeling completely helpless, I could only watch and pray. I felt as if I were trapped in a nightmare.
It seemed like a long time, but I’m sure it was just minutes later when I heard a commotion on the stairs. Looking over my shoulder, I saw a couple of paramedics and quickly moved out of their way, backing into Elvis’s bedroom.
The paramedics began CPR on Elvis as Lisa suddenly appeared in the bedroom doorway. “What’s wrong with my daddy?” she asked.
Instinctively, I moved to protect her. I didn’t want her to see her father like this. “Nothing, Lisa,” I said, turning her away.
As I started to shut the bedroom door, Lisa said, “Something’s wrong and I’m going to find out.” She took off down the hall toward the entrance to Elvis’s dressing area. Racing to the bathroom door, I spotted Al standing down that way and shouted to him, “Lisa’s trying to get in!”
Al quickly shut and locked the door. I knew they would be taking Elvis to a hospital soon; thinking I’d be riding in the ambulance with him, I rushed to my bathroom and hastily dressed in the clothes I’d worn the previous evening. Afterward, I hurried toward Elvis’s bathroom just in time to see the paramedics and the other men lift Elvis onto a stretcher.
I moved out of their way as they started toward the stairway, with Vernon and the others following close behind. As I watched the paramedics carry Elvis downstairs and out the front door, the reality of what was happening suddenly hit me. I began to cry as the ambulance sped away. I suddenly felt very alone and needed to talk with someone.
I returned to my bathroom and dialed my mother’s number with shaking fingers. The minute my mother heard the quaver in my voice, she said, “What’s wrong?”
Gripped by anxiety, I said, “I think something has happened to Elvis.”
“Maybe it’s not that bad,” she said, trying to calm me down.
“Mom, they’ve taken him in an ambulance and it looks bad.” I broke down.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said, still trying to reassure me.
I hung up the phone, relieved that my mother was coming. I found myself wishing more than anything that I really had been trapped in a bad dream, but there had been a crack in the universe and a cold reality was creeping over me.
CHAPTER 27
It was shortly after 4 P.M. when I turned from the window in the living room. I would later learn that this was the time Elvis’s death was announced publicly.
Amber was approaching me. “Where’s Lisa?” I asked, feeling a mixture of grief and concern about Lisa being alone.
Amber told me Lisa was in another room with some family members. A few other relatives of Elvis’s were sitting on the stairway, so I took Amber over there and we sat on the front steps, too.
I had never felt so completely lost. I saw George Klein walk over to the table by the stairs and try making a phone call. As he hung up and stepped into the middle of the foyer, I walked down the stairs and hugged him.
George embraced me in return and we both broke down. “He loved you so much,” he said.
I understood George had lost his dear friend, and I could only hope he knew just how much his comment meant to me.
Lisa walked up to me then. Wanting to comfort her, I brought her upstairs with Amber, where I sat beside Lisa on the couch in her room and put my arms around her. I struggled through my own fog of grief in search of the right words to say to this little girl who’d just lost her father.
“You know your daddy loved you, Lisa,” I managed. “He was a wonderful father and he’s gone to heaven, but he will always be watching over you.” She sat quietly beside me. I wondered if Lisa could possibly grasp any of this.
Before long, a team of men arrived from the police department and led me into Elvis’s office, where they asked me a few questions. After they’d gone, I turned everything over in my mind. What had happened to Elvis?
It was impossible to get a grip on the situation. I was too flooded with emotion. I returned downstairs and sat at the dining room table with Amber, knowing that by now my family must have heard the news, along with the rest of the world. I hadn’t been able to call them, and they hadn’t managed to reach me, either, because the phone lines were jammed and so was the street outside Graceland.
Everyone in the house was grieving. I was surrounded by all these people, and yet I felt alone. The only people who could really change that for me at the time were in my own family, and waiting for them was difficult. Eventually someone told me my sister Terry had managed to get through and was on the phone.
I took the call in the hall by the stairs, breaking down again. I could tell Terry had been crying, too, as she said, “I’m sorry.” She let me know that our mother, Rosemary, and my sister-in-law were on their way.
After the call I retreated to the dining room again. Everyone at Graceland was crying, disbelieving, offering or receiving comfort at various times. Just after five, my family made it through the front door. We hugged
each other and they began offering their condolences to Vernon and other members among Elvis’s friends and family.
A while later, Aunt Delta approached me. She gently asked if I had anything upstairs that I wanted to get, as they needed to close it off and lock it. I asked her if I could borrow a suitcase and she loaned me one. Rosemary said she’d go with me and Delta walked upstairs with the two of us.
Upon entering Elvis’s office, I glanced toward his bedroom. I had slept wearing my engagement ring and the TLC necklace Elvis had given me. Now I considered my photos on his night table, the necklace I’d tried designing for him but had yet to finish, and the wedding list in his room. Seized by an overwhelming desire to stay linked to Graceland, I left all of those things there.
In my bathroom, I gathered a few items, placed them inside the suitcase, and picked up my jewelry box. I took one last look at Elvis’s bedroom before following Delta back downstairs.
Elvis’s funeral arrangements were beginning to be discussed among some of the people gathered there. Someone told us we would be called when they were completed. Things were moving quickly, and they didn’t seem to need me or to consult with me on what those plans would be. The pain that I was feeling was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I felt I needed a private haven to try to process what really was unfathomable, that Elvis was dead.
This was the beginning of my grieving process. The only safe place I could think to do this was at home, where I’d be surrounded by my family.
I said good-bye to Vernon, Sandy, Dodger, Lisa, and others. It was more difficult to leave Lisa because I’d grown closer to her, but I felt she would be all right as she was surrounded by her family.
My emotional pain was so great, it took every ounce of energy I had to make it through the front door. I had to focus on just putting one foot in front of the other. The police parted the crowd gathered at the gates of Graceland to let us through.
Even back at home and alone with my family, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was trapped in a nightmare. My father returned to the house in an effort to lend me his support and told me how sorry he was.
Later, my mother told me that, right after I’d called her at work, she had to put her head down on her desk. Another employee asked if she needed to go to the nurses’ station. “I told him I didn’t think I could make it there,” my mother said, and told her colleague that Elvis was in the hospital, but not to say anything. She then went to her supervisor and said she had to leave.
My sister-in-law had been worried about Amber, naturally, so my mother had headed home to pick her up on the way to Graceland. On her way home, my mother had heard on the radio that Elvis was dead.
The traffic was so congested on their way to Graceland that, when they came to a red light at the corner of Elvis Presley Boulevard and Winchester Road, my sister-in-law, Carolyn, had jumped out of the car and stopped traffic with her hands so my mother could make the turn. They had then driven the few blocks to Graceland in the turning lane with the emergency flashers on.
At the gates to Graceland, Carolyn had yelled to a nearby police officer, “This is Ginger’s mother!” to make him clear a path. That was the only way they’d made it through Graceland’s gates to pick up Amber and me.
Every television channel carried the news of Elvis’s death, but I couldn’t watch the reports. At one point, someone told me that Joe Esposito had been interviewed; they’d heard him say he was the one who found Elvis.
What? I couldn’t believe it! Little did I know that the untruths were just beginning.
That evening, someone called our house to say there would be a private viewing of Elvis’s body at Graceland at eleven the next morning, on Wednesday, August 17. I dreaded this. I wasn’t sure if I could see Elvis this way.
Later that night, the Shelby County medical examiner ruled Elvis’s cause of death as cardiac arrhythmia with severe cardiovascular disease present. How was this possible? He was only forty-two! After hearing the news, I asked my mother to lie in bed with me. I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone.
Yet, oddly, that night I felt Elvis’s presence in the room with me. A comforting, peaceful sensation enveloped me. Maybe I wasn’t alone after all, I thought. Maybe Elvis was still watching over me.
It was a sleepless night for all of us. My parents had to take the phone off the hook because we were being barraged by reporters calling from all over the world.
There were moments during that night when I found myself wishing I hadn’t been the one to find Elvis. But, as difficult as it had been, had I not been there and only heard of his death, I felt it would have been harder for me to take in the news of him passing away.
• • •
A massive crowd had gathered in front of Graceland by the time my family and I arrived for the viewing the next morning. Some people looked like they must have slept all night by the gates.
As I stepped through the front door, I found it was still nearly impossible to imagine that Elvis was gone. A little over twenty-four hours ago, I had been upstairs with him right in this house, planning our future together. There was a surreal element to almost everything unfolding in front of me.
I saw Lisa walking about, mingling with various people as she went to and from the kitchen. I greeted her, Vernon, and a few others, then went into Dodger’s room and gave her a hug. She had always been nice to me and this was so hard.
Priscilla Presley had arrived with her own family. Of course she would be here because she was Lisa’s mother. Yet, as I watched Priscilla greet a few people—some of whom I had never met before—I felt strangely displaced. Elvis had been trying to get it through my head that, as the future Mrs. Presley, I was the lady of the house, but now that role seemed farther from reality than ever, and I found myself withdrawing from those gathered.
When I saw Joe a little later, he didn’t approach me with any explanation as to why he’d said he was the one who had found Elvis. This wasn’t the time or place to ask him about his version of events, but knowing Joe had done that felt like a small but painful betrayal.
The furniture in the living room had been removed and replaced by folding chairs, adding to the surreal nature of the experience. Some chairs were arranged against the right wall, facing the fireplace, while others were in rows lined up in the center and facing the music room. My family and I took seats in some center chairs; from there, I glanced around the room at the various floral arrangements.
Flowers were continually arriving and being brought into the room. My family and I had sent some earlier. Now, I wondered which arrangement was mine. My flowers were as lost as I was.
Before long, I noticed Priscilla and her family enter and seat themselves against the wall facing us. A little while later, a copper casket was brought into the house and placed at the entrance to the music room. It was around noon by now. When the lid was opened, it was hard for me to look. Charlie stood at the head of the casket, greeting viewers as they paid their respects to Elvis. I waited awhile, steeling my resolve, then finally walked to the front.
Elvis was dressed in a white suit with a pale blue shirt and white tie. It seemed odd. I’d never seen him in a suit. As crazy as it might have looked to some, I thought it would have been more appropriate if he’d been dressed in one of his jumpsuits, or even in his pajamas and robe. Absurdly, I thought he would have felt more comfortable that way. Also, where was his gun? Where were his jug of water and cigar?
While I was standing there, Lisa came up to the casket and stood next to me. I smiled at her and she gently touched Elvis’s hair. I lightly stroked the side of his face.
From his post near the head of the casket, Charlie said, “He looks good, doesn’t he?”
I managed to look up at Charlie and nod.
In a mystical, knowing way, Charlie spoke again. “Ginger, he hasn’t gone anywhere,” he said softly. “He’s just on another p
lane right now.”
I felt comforted by Charlie’s words. Where are you, Elvis?
I couldn’t help but hear Elvis’s voice in response, saying the same words he had whispered in my ear in the back of the church at my grandfather’s funeral: “Son, you’re on your own.” Only this time the words sent a chill through me and cut me like a knife.
I returned to my seat, but every so often, I got up again to look at Elvis. Strangely, what had been so difficult for me to do in the beginning now brought me peace. Elvis looked like he was just sleeping.
While I was seated in my chair between visits to the casket, an unfamiliar woman tapped me on the shoulder. “Priscilla would like to see you,” she said.
Surprised, I followed her around the corner. We entered the foyer and I saw Priscilla standing next to the front stairs. “Hello,” she said, and introduced me to the woman who’d come for me, Joan Esposito, who I would later learn was Joe’s ex-wife.
I was even more stunned when Priscilla drew me into a hug. “Ginger, I know how much Elvis loved you,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said, embracing her in return. I suddenly had the most incredible feeling of acceptance, as Priscilla acknowledged what Elvis and I had together. “Would you like to meet my family?”
“Not right now,” she said, “but I’d like to later.”
I walked back into the living room and sat down, relaying to my family what had just happened. When Priscilla entered the room again later, I got up and introduced my mother to her and her parents.
After a time, everyone was informed that there would be a public viewing at three that afternoon. I really thought it was a wonderful idea that his fans would be given the opportunity to pay their respects, too. I was sure that was a cue for most of us to leave, so I decided to return home before it began. As I was leaving, I was told the funeral would be the next afternoon, August 18, at two.
