LOS ANGELES – Mariah Carey’s mother Patricia and sister Alison both died on the same day, the singer said Monday.
“My heart is broken that I have lost my mother this past weekend. “Unfortunately, in a tragic turn of events, my sister lost her life that same day,” the Grammy-winning singer said in a statement.
“I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mother before she passed,” the statement continued. “I appreciate everyone’s love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time.”
Times Union reported Monday that Alison, who was largely estranged from Carey, died at age 63 of complications with her organ function and that she had been in hospice care.
People Magazine first reported the news of their deaths and Carey’s statement.
Patricia was a Juilliard-trained opera singer whom Carey credits as an inspiration from a young age.
“I sang little songs around the house, to my mother’s delight. And she always encouraged me,” she wrote in her 2020 memoir, “The Meaning of Mariah Carey.”
Patricia was previously married to Alfred Roy Carey, the singer’s father. The parents divorced when the “Vision of Love” singer was 3. Carey grew up in Suffolk County on Long Island and lived primarily with her mother after her parents’ divorce. Her father died of cancer in 2002 at the age of 72.
Carey described her complicated relationship with her mother and sister in her memoir, writing that she and her mother often clashed, causing her to feel “so much pain and confusion”, and accused her sister of putting her in insecure situations as a child.
“Like many aspects of my life, my journey with my mother has been full of contradictions and competing realities. It’s never just been black and white—it’s been a whole rainbow of emotions,” Carey wrote in the book. “Our relationship is a barbed wire of pride, pain, shame, gratitude, jealousy, admiration and disappointment. A complicated love binds my heart to my mother’s.”
Carey kept in touch with her mother and even recorded a duet of “O Come All Ye Faithful/Hallelujah Chorus” for the singer’s second Christmas album in 2010.