Mariah Carey‘s mom Patricia Carey and sister Alison Carey died on the same day over the weekend, according to PEOPLE.
“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 an exclusive statement to PEOPLE.
“I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mom before she passed,” adds Mariah. “I appreciate everyone’s love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time.”
The death of Mariah’s sister, Alison, 63, was confirmed by friend David Baker, the Times Union reports.
Baker declined to share the cause of death but said it was related to Allison’s organ function and that she had been in hospice care.
“We knew it was coming,” he said, adding: “There were signs that she couldn’t go any further.”
Patricia, the singer’s estranged mother, was a Juilliard-trained opera singer who Mariah 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.”
“My journey with my mother has been full of contradictions”
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.”