Mariah Carey Reveals Her Mom Patricia and Sister Alison Died on the Same Day: ‘My Heart Is Broken’
Mariah Carey revealed she suffered a heartbreaking double tragedy, confirming that her mother, Patricia, and sister, Alison, died on the same day.
"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," Mariah, 55, said in a statement to People on Monday, August 26.
"I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mom before she passed," the Grammy winner added. "I appreciate everyone’s love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time."
The "We Belong Together" singer had a complicated relationship with both of her late relatives. Patricia died at age 87, and Alison died at age 62.
Patricia gave birth to Mariah on March 27, 1969, in Huntington, New York. She was the youngest of three children born to the opera singer and her husband, Alfred Carey. Mariah's parents divorced when she was 3 years old, and Patricia maintained primary custody.
The "Fantasy" songstress detailed “significant neglect” during her upbringing in her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey.
"For my sanity and peace of mind, my therapist encouraged me to literally rename and reframe my family,” she 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.”
Mariah said of her mother, "Ours is a story of betrayal and beauty. Of love and abandonment. Of sacrifice and survival. 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.”
"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," she shared.
Mariah revealed that she still had love for her mom, noting, "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."
The "Vision of Love" superstar said of her siblings that it was "emotionally and physically safer for me not to have any contact" with Alison or Morgan.
Alison filed a lawsuit against Mariah in February 2021 for what she wrote about her in her memoir. The suit filed with the New York County Supreme Court asked for a minimum of $1.25 million for “the infliction of immense emotional distress caused by defendant’s heartless, vicious, vindictive, despicable and totally unnecessary public humiliation of defendant’s already profoundly damaged older sister.”
The lawsuit alleged that Mariah “has publicly acknowledged plaintiff’s vulnerability. In stories published several weeks prior to the release of her book, defendant was quoted as saying plaintiff is ‘damaged’ and ‘very broken.’ But despite that, defendant user her status as a public figure to attack her penniless sister, generating sensational headlines describing her lurid claims to promote sales of her book."
"Defendant’s cruel and outrageous allegations have devastated the plaintiff. Already struggling with the unspeakable trauma of her childhood and having her own children abandon her, she has become severely depressed and uncharacteristically tearful since the publication of defendant’s book and now struggles, after a long time clean, with alcohol abuse," the suit claimed.
The lawsuit was currently ongoing at the time of Alison's death.
