The singer said she was “blessed” to have spent the last week with her mother before she died
Mariah Carey‘s mother Patricia and sister Alison died on the same day last 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 singer said in a statement to Rolling Stone .
“I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mom before she passed,” Carey added. “I appreciate everyone’s love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time.”
Neither the date of Patricia and Alison’s death nor the cause of death was given.
In her 2020 memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey, the star shared how her therapist once recommended she redefine her relationship with her family for her own “sanity and peace of mind.” Recalling this time of her life, Carey wrote, “My mother became Pat to me, Morgan my ex-brother and Alison my ex-sister … I had to stop expecting them to one day miraculously become the mommy, big brother and big sister I fantasized about.”
The singer was also opened about her difficult relationship with her mother, which had been a “a cloud of sadness” throughout her life. “Ours is a story of betrayal and beauty. Of love and abandonment. Of sacrifice and survival,” Mariah recalled. “I’ve emancipated myself from bondage several times, but there is a cloud of sadness that I suspect will always hang over me, not simply because of my mother but because of our complicated journey together.”
The Grammy winner described their bond as complex and deep: “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.”