It is a tragic time for Mariah Carey's family. The 55-year-old singer has revealed that, in a shocking turn of events, she lost both her mother and her sister on the same day this past weekend.
In a statement, the pop superstar revealed that her mother, Patricia, passed away at 87, and that her older sister Alison also died at age 62. The cause of their deaths remains unknown.
"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," Mariah told People.
"I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mom before she passed," she continued. "I appreciate everyone's love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time."
Mariah has remained off social media for the past few days to process the loss as well. Patricia and her ex-husband Alfred Carey welcomed three children — Mariah, Alison, and their older brother Morgan.
Mariah has had a complicated relationship with her family, especially since her parents divorced when she was three years old. She remained with her mother, as did her brother, while her sister moved in with her father, and she had little contact with Alfred after.
She has spoken in the past about her complicated relationship with her mother, who is also a singer. She wrote in her memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey: "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."
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Mariah added: "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."
The "We Belong Together" songstress has rarely spoken about her sister, mentioning also in her memoir that she maintained a distant and complicated relationship with Alison the same way she did with her mother.
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Mariah and her mother did collaborate on a duet for her 2010 Christmas special Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas to You, and has maintained that despite the push and pull nature of their relationship, they remained relatively close up until the end.
In 2020, Mariah sat down for a conversation with Oprah Winfrey and claimed of Alison: "When I was 12 years old, my sister drugged me with valium, offered me a pinky nail full of cocaine, inflicted me with third degree burns and tried to sell me out to a pimp."
She reasoned that her siblings were "damaged," and continued: "We don't even really know each other, and that's the thing. We didn't grow up together, but we did."
"Like, they were on their journeys, by the time I got into the world, they had already been damaged, in my opinion. But again, I wasn't there. I was dropped into this world and I literally felt like an outsider amongst my own family."