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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mariah Carey’s mother Patricia and sister Alison both died on the same day, the singer said Monday.
“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 a statement.
“I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mom before she passed,” the statement continued. “I appreciate everyone’s love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time.”
The Times Union reported Monday that Alison, who was largely estranged from Carey, died at 63 from 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 who Carey credits as an inspiration to her from a young age.
“I would sing little tunes 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 age 72.
Carey detailed her complicated relationship with her mother and her sister in her memoir, in which she wrote that she and her mother often clashed, causing her to feel “so much pain and confusion,” and accused her sister of putting her in unsafe 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 been only black-and-white — it’s been a whole rainbow of emotions,” Carey wrote in the book. “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.”
Carey maintained contact 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.