Beech Tree News Network

On Saturday, our daughter, Natalie, and her husband, Scott, were married in a ceremony at Graceland in Memphis.  Scott is a big Elvis fan, hence the ceremony location.  The little “Chapel in the Woods” adjoins the grounds where the mansion is located.  There are pictures of Elvis and Pricilla on the wall in the small dressing room, where I helped my daughter and granddaughter, Sabria, into their dresses, as well as additional pictures of the couple in the chapel.  It was a simple and lovely ceremony.  Sabria was a junior bride, and I choked up as I turned and watched Garey coming down the aisle with Natalie on one arm and Sabria on the other. 
    After the ceremony was over and we’d said our goodbyes, Garey, Sabria and I took the Graceland tour.  I had taken the tour years ago with my daughters years before when they were in high school, but Garey had never been, and Sabria was anxious to see the peacock windows and the “Lisa Marie” airplane.
    The thing that struck me as odd those many years ago and again on Saturday is how small the place is.  Many living areas in average people’s homes today are as big or bigger than Graceland.  My kitchen has more square feet than the one at the mansion. 
    Graceland has been kept exactly as it was when Elvis lived there, down to his mom’s house coats hanging in the closet of the bedroom where his mom and dad, Gladys and Vernon, slept.  Many of the furnishings are flamboyant and velour-covered.  There is nothing about Graceland that is subdued or understated.  It was, after all, the home of a man who lived his life out loud.  Elvis didn’t hide.  In the end, that’s probably what made him so vulnerable.
    Elvis’ presence looms large on the property, but nowhere as large as in the trophy room.  The gold and platinum records stretch from floor to ceiling, wrap around corners and meet you on the other side of walls.  They are tributes to an unbelievable talent, a super-human determination, and a transcendent voice that could not be silenced, not even in death.
    The first time I took the tour, I was enveloped by a deep sense of sadness as I walked where Elvis had walked and listened to his voice in endless interviews with the press that played on TVs throughout the mansion.  I felt the same sadness on this tour.  It wasn’t the sadness over a life cut short or the sadness over losing a great talent.  It was a sadness for Elvis Presley, the mortal man.
    He had to live with something that became bigger than he was, something of his own making.  Elvis Presley created Elvis, the superstar.  And in the words of Susie Boggess, “You can   really run everything you start.” 
    By the end of his life, Elvis had morphed into a person barely recognizable to the people closest to him.  The world grieved when he died.  There was shock among his fans that it was really over.  The man who had created and recreated the personality they loved wouldn’t rise from the ashes as he had before.  This time he would stay down, buried next to his mother on the property he loved—Graceland. 
    “I want to live here in Elvis’ house,” Sabria said to me, as the tour ended.
    “You can’t live here,” I said, “Nobody lives here.  It’s just a museum.”
    “Will they turn our house into a museum after we die?” she asked.
    “Probably not,” I said, “We’re not Elvis.”
    And nobody else was or ever will be.