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Mariah Carey Says Her Mother and Sister Died on the Same Day: NPR
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Mariah Carey Says Her Mother and Sister Died on the Same Day: NPR

Mariah Carey says her

Mariah Carey says she’s “heartbroken that I lost my mom” — and in a tragic turn of events, the singer’s older sister also passed away on the same day. Carey was seen performing in Los Angeles last year.

Emma McIntyre/Getty Images


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Singer Mariah Carey has announced a family tragedy. Her mother, Patricia, and her sister, Alison, recently died on the same day.

“I am heartbroken that I lost my mother this past weekend,” Carey said in a statement released Monday. “Sadly, in a tragic turn of events, my sister lost her life on the same day.”

Carey said she was glad to have spent the last week with her mother, who reportedly moved to a nursing home in Florida several years ago. Carey’s sister, Alison, died in upstate New York, according to local media.

“I appreciate everyone’s love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time,” she added. News of the two women’s deaths was first reported by People magazine.

The pop superstar did not provide details about the cause of death. Patricia Carey was 87, according to public records.

Alison Carey died at age 63 at a hospice in Greene County, N.Y., south of Albany, the Times Union reported. The newspaper quoted David Baker, a friend of Alison Carey who had helped her with housing and benefits, as saying her death followed problems with her organ function. It was reported that she had struggled with substance abuse.

Carey, 55, has said she has complicated relationships with her family, and describes her early life as a source of recurring instability. She has linked her past to the very public emotional struggles the singer endured, even as her career soared to rare heights.

“I think my tolerance level for dysfunction is so high because I grew up in a very dysfunctional environment,” Carey told NPR in 2006.

Carey had maintained ties with her mother, including singing a Christmas medley together in 2010 and spending time with Carey’s young children. But she was reportedly estranged from her sister, who sued Carey over allegations made about her in the singer’s 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey.

Carey described her mother as a neglectful parent and said in her memoir that Patricia, who was white, fueled her childhood insecurities in a number of ways, including not taking care of her biracial daughter’s hair. But she also credited her mother, a former opera singer who trained at Juilliard, with encouraging her to sing and discover her talent.

In her memoir, Carey also alleges that her older sister repeatedly put her in dangerous situations, including giving Mariah drugs when she was 12.

Carey’s mother reportedly moved to a nursing home in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 2020. A year later, Carey sold the Westchester County, New York, home she bought for her mother in the 1990s.