PETALING JAYA, Aug 27 — Singer Mariah Carey has confirmed that both her mother, Patricia, and her sister, Alison, died on the same day over the weekend.
“My heart is broken that I’ve lost my mother this past weekend. Sadly, in a tragic turn of events, my sister lost her life on the same day,” the Grammy-winning singer said in an exclusive statement to People.
“I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mom before she passed. I appreciate everyone’s love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time.”
No other details have been revealed, including the causes of Patricia and Alison's death.
Mariah maintained a complicated relationship with her mother, who was previously married to Alfred Roy Carey.
The 55-year-old singer inherited her talent from her mother, who was a Juilliard-trained opera singer and vocal coach before the couple welcomed Alison, Mariah and son Morgan.
Patricia and Alfred divorced when Mariah was three-years-old.
“Like many aspects of my life, my journey with my mother has been full of contradictions and competing realities. It's never been only black-and-white — it's been a whole rainbow of emotions,” she wrote in her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey.
“Our relationship is a prickly rope of pride, pain, shame, gratitude, jealousy, admiration and disappointment. A complicated love tethers my heart to my mother's.”
In 2010, Mariah and Patricia performed together for ABC's Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas to You special and performed a festive mother-daughter duet of O Come All Ye Faithful/Hallelujah Chorus.
She had a similarly complicated relationship with her sister, saying in her memoir that it was, “emotionally and physically safer for me not to have any contact” with both her siblings.
