Julie,
In your toughts you ARE ALREADDY AT GRACELAND.
I only was there once and many fans go year after year. I don't. I have seen it but to be honest you can be even closer to him at home listening to his records then being there.
I know lots will disagree with me but I don't really know how to describe my mixed feelings about Graceland.
It is a beautiful place and I really could feel his presence and I could imagine him walking there and swimming in his pool etc... but being at his grave was a VERY SAD experience.
I was mad, I was revolting.
WHY was he there under the ground, why couldn't he enjoye life anymore, why was he surrounded my many shallow people.
I saw the grave, not different from the other graves and I did not feel him there. But I looked at the beautiful grounds next to the grave and to the pool aria and there I really could see him in my imagination, playing, laughing, walking hand in hand with little Lisa towards the horses etc... And I cried because those times were forever gone.
Graceland is no longer a home, it is a museum and millions have enterrred his house and I know it is not the same interiour anymore like he lived there . It was redecorated entirely in living room and dining room and entrance too.
It is beautiful but not any more authentic. You stroll through the house and see lots of things but afterwards you see so many more things on pics that you did not notice when you were there in reality.
I took lots of pics there and most of them don't even have a better quality then the one showed on many internetsites.
When I came back of Memphis I was really having a depression which alreaddy started there for numerous reasons, some were personal ones but came out there. I cried a lot in Memphis
Coming home I realised suddenly completely that he was gone forever. It was 1997 and then he was alreaddy dead for 20 years but having been at Graceland made it suddenly "a fact" that I could no longer ignore.
There is an emptiness, there are some whispers in the air which tells us it could have been different. I felt his pain there and his losses and his dissapointments and lonliness.
I saw all the commotion on the streets, the impersonators, the tasteless merchandising and I felt he was betrayed by so many...
So Julie, don't feel left out because you did not visit Graceland yet. For some it is the time of their life their but remember for some it is a devastating and not so pleasant experience either.
To me it was the last one I'm afraid. I much more enjoye watching him "alive" on dvd, hearing his records and just see pictures of that beautiful home but I really don't want to go again.
Nadine
A star burned too brightly, burned out too quickly and we were left with the afterglow which has never dimmed."
ELVIS - Did you ever know you were my hero