Mariah Carey’s mother, Patricia, and her sister, Alison, both passed away over the weekend. “My heart is broken that I lost my mother this past weekend.
Sadly, in a tragic turn of events, my sister also lost her life on the same day,” the Grammy-winning singer, 55, shared.
“I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mom before she passed,” Mariah added. “I appreciate everyone’s love, support, and respect for my privacy during this impossible time.”
At this time, no additional details, including the causes of Patricia and Alison’s deaths, have been released.
Patricia, who was previously married to Alfred Roy Carey, was a Juilliard-trained opera singer and vocal coach before the couple had Alison, Mariah, and their son, Morgan. The parents later divorced when the “Hero” singer was 3 years old.
Mariah’s relationship with her mother — from whom she inherited her vocal talents — was complex throughout her life.
“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,” Mariah 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,” Mariah continued in the book. “A complicated love tethers my heart to my mother.”
Despite their ups and downs, Mariah maintained a relationship with her mother. In 2010, they appeared together on ABC’s *Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas to You* special, performing a mother-daughter duet of “O Come All Ye Faithful/Hallelujah Chorus.”
Mariah also dedicated part of her memoir to Patricia. “And to Pat, my mother, who, through it all, I do believe actually did the best she could,” she wrote. “I will love you the best I can, always.”
Mariah’s relationship with Alison was also quite complex. In her memoir, she wrote that it was, at least at the time, “emotionally and physically safer for me not to have any contact” with either Alison or Morgan.