For superstar singer Mariah Carey, the end of the year is usually her busiest period, as she heads out on the road and makes multiple TV appearances during the holiday season. However, this year that time will be filled with sadness. According to People, over the weekend, the Grammy winner’s mother Patricia and sister Alison passed away on the same day.
“My heart is broken that I’ve lost my mother this past weekend,” Carey said in a statement. “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.”
After her parents divorced when she was three, Mariah was mostly raised by her mother. Patricia was a talented opera singer in her own right and memorably sang a duet of “O Come All Ye Faithful/Hallelujah Chorus” with her daughter in 2010.
In her 2020 memoir, “The Meaning of Mariah Carey,” she described their relationship as “a prickly rope of pride, pain, shame, gratitude, jealousy, admiration and disappointment.” She added: “A complicated love tethers my heart to my mother’s.”
She even dedicated the book to her mother, writing, “And to Pat, my mother, who, through it all, I do believe actually did the best she could. I will love you the best I can, always.”
Though she and her mother went through “a whole rainbow of emotions” in their life together, things with her sister seemed to be even more complicated. In the book she wrote that it was “emotionally and physically safer for me not to have any contact” with Alison and her brother, Morgan.
According to TODAY, her memoir includes allegations that her older sister abused Mariah when they were younger. She accused Alison of burning her with boiling tea and drugging her with Valium when she was 12.
“My sister drugged me with Valium, offered me a pinky nail full of cocaine, inflicted me with third-degree burns, and tried to sell me out to a pimp,” the actress/singer wrote in the book.
In response, Alison threatened to sue Mariah for $1.25 million over the abuse accusations saying the “intentional 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.” Per multiple outlets, there are no other details on the suit.
The “Vision of Love” singer is currently scheduled to kick off her annual Christmas tour in November. So much of Mariah Carey’s ups and downs have played out in the public eye, let’s hope she and her children are given the privacy and time they deserve to grieve as a family.