Mariah Carey has confirmed a heartbreaking family tragedy. Her mother Patricia and 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, 55, said in a statement to People.
“I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mom before she passed,” added Mariah. “I appreciate everyone’s love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time.”
No other details, including the singer’s mother and sister’s causes of death, are known at this time.
Patricia, who was previously married to Alfred Roy Carey, was a Juilliard-trained opera singer and vocal coach.
The couple welcomed Alison, Mariah and son Morgan but later divorced when the Hero singer was 3 years old.
Mariah’s relationship with her mother was complicated 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,” 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,” continued Mariah in the memoir.
“A complicated love tethers my heart to my mother’s.”
Despite their complicated relationship, Mariah didn’t cut things off with her mother.
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In 2010, they came together for ABC’s Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas to You special and performed a duet of “O Come All Ye Faithful/Hallelujah Chorus.”
Mariah also dedicated her memoir in part 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 her sister was also complicated.
The star wrote in her memoir that it was, at the time, “emotionally and physically safer for me not to have any contact” with her or Morgan.