"My heart is broken," Mariah Carey said in a short statement to People. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Mariah Carey has confirmed that her mother Patricia and sister Alison died on the same day over the weekend.
No other details, including their cause of death are known at this time.
"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-winner told People in a short statement.
"I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mum before she passed," Carey wrote. "I appreciate everyone's love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time."
Carey's mum, Patricia, was a Juilliard-trained opera singer and vocal coach before she and husband Alfred Roy Carey welcomed Alison, Mariah and son Morgan. The couple divorced when the superstar singer was 3 years old.
Alfred Roy Carey died of a rare form of cancer in 2002.
Mariah dedicated her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, 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."
In the book she wrote of a complicated relationship between them.
"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."
Mariah Carey's relationship with her sister Alison was also tense. She wrote at the time that it was "emotionally and physically safer for me not to have any contact" with her or Morgan.
