On another occasion, he recalled Elvis’ kind deed for a woman whose home burned down around Christmastime; the woman and her children escaped but lost their belongings.
“He had one of the guys that worked for him go get an apartment, pay for six months rent, furnish it, get toys and clothes and everything for the family,” Stanley said. “His strict instructions was…if she asked who did this, he said, ‘You just tell her Santa Claus did it.’ He didn’t want the recognition for it.”
Tragically, Elvis’ life was cut very short.
The Devastation of Elvis’ Death
Millions mourned Elvis’ death after the singer unexpectedly perished due to heart failure, but Stanley’s loss was deeply personal; it rocked his world. At the time, Stanley was no longer working for his stepbrother, as he wanted to “make it on his own.”
“It devastated me because I never could have pictured [it],” he said. “I always thought he was gonna outlive me…I never thought of it. And when it actually happened, it just devastated me so bad that I didn’t know how to grieve at the time, and I turned to alcohol and drugs.”
Stanley recalled a dream he had after Elvis’ death — an earth-shattering moment that led him to seek sobriety.
“One night, I had a dream, and I was talking to Elvis, and I just looked at him, and I said, ‘What does it feel like being dead?’” Stanley recalled. “And he looked at me and said, ‘Don’t you know?’”
Stanley said he woke up in a cold sweat and entered a treatment center.
“I got…clean and sober in 1987,” he said.
Stanley also reflected on his final conversation with Elvis, a chat that unfolded just two days before the singer died. As Elvis was helping his stepbrother bandage up a minor injury in the bathroom, the two looked at one other in the mirror and had a heartfelt conversation.
“He says, ‘Do you believe God forgives us for all our sins?’ I said, ‘Yes,’” Stanley said. “He kind of took me off guard with that question. I said, ‘Yes, we’ve read about it many times, and you’ve told me this too, and this is what I’ve learned in church.’ He said, ‘Good. I just want to make sure you know that.’”
The brothers then started to talk about life and their dreams, and Elvis offered encouragement for Stanley’s future.
“He said, ‘One day, Billy, you’re gonna fall in love with a girl [and she will] just go and change your whole life,’ and that’s happened,” Stanley said. “Everything he told me that day has happened.”
Stanley said he’s hoping his new book “The Faith of Elvis: A Story Only a Brother Can Tell” will offer a new lens into Elvis’ life — and faith. But, most importantly, he wants people to discover a relationship with Jesus as a result of it.
“One thing I hope is that they get a relationship with God themselves, seeing that the most famous entertainer of all time had a relationship with Him,” he said.
– This story originally appeared on Faithwire.com.
