Double heartbreak for Mariah Carey as mother and sister die on the same day

27 August 2024, 05:43

Mariah Carey's mother and older sister died on the same day this weekend, the singer has revealed.

Carey said her mother Patricia, 87, and sister Alison, 63, had died without revealing the cause.

"My heart is broken that I've lost my mother this past weekend," Carey, 55, said on Monday evening. "Sadly, in a tragic turn of events, my sister lost her life on the same day.

"I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mom before she passed.

"I appreciate everyone's love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time."

Carey had complex relationships with both her mother and her sister.

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Patricia was a former opera singer and vocal coach of Irish descent. Carey said their relationship had caused her "so much pain and confusion" amid professional jealousy.

Carey said in her 2020 memoir that jealousy "comes with the territory of success, but when the person is your mother and the jealousy is revealed at such a tender age, it’s particularly painful".

But she added of her mother that "through it all, I do believe actually did the best she could. I will love you the best I can, always."

Carey was not close with her sister, writing in her memoir that it was "emotionally and physically safer for me to not have any contact".

Alison later sued her for $1.2m (£909,780) for the "immense emotional distress" caused by the "vindictive" memoir.

Carey's father Alfred died of cancer in 2002 at the age of 72. She also has an older brother, named Morgan.

Carey is widely considered among the best singers of her generation.

She is one of the most commercially successful musicians ever, with 220 million records sold, and in 2023 was ranked as the fifth greatest singer of all time by the magazine Rolling Stone.