“I appreciate everyone’s love and support as well as respect for my privacy during this impossible time,” adds Mariah
PEOPLE can confirm that Mariah Carey’s sister Alison and mother Patricia passed on the same day over the weekend.
“Losing my mother this past weekend breaks my heart. Sadly, in a terrible turn of circumstances, my sister passed away on the same day,” Grammy-winning singer 55 revealed in an exclusive statement to PEOPLE.
“I feel lucky that I could spend the last week with my mom before she passed,” says Mariah. “I value everyone’s love, and respect of my privacy during this impossible time.”
At this point, nothing else is known—including the causes of death for Patricia and Alison.
Previously married to Alfred Roy Carey, Patricia was a vocal instructor and Juilliard-trained opera singer before the couple welcomed Alison, Mariah, and her son Morgan. Later, when the “Hero” vocalist was three years old, the parents split.
From whom Mariah inherited her singing ability, her connection with her mother was complex all her life.
“Like many facets of my life, my path with my mother has been one of conflicting reality and paradoxes. It’s never been merely black-and-white; it’s a full rainbow of emotions,” she writes in her 2020 biography The Meaning of Mariah Carey.
“Mariah Carey Shares Heartbreaking News of Mother’s and Sister’s Passing”
“Our relationship is a prickly rope of pride, pain, shame, gratitude, jealousy, admiration, and disappointment,” Mariah wrote in the book. “A complex love threads my heart to my mother’s.”
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Mariah kept a bond with her mother through the ups and downs. They reunited in 2010 for ABC’s Mariah Carey: Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas to You special and played a joyful mother-daughter duet of “O Come All Ye Faithful/Hallelujah Chorus.”
Mariah also devoted some of her memoirs to Patricia. “And to Pat, my mother, who, through it all, I do believe did the best she could,” she penned. “I shall love you the best I can always.”
Mariah’s relationship with Alison also was somewhat complicated. At least at the moment, the celebrity notes in the memoir, “emotionally and physically safer for me not to have any contact” with her or Morgan.
Patricia was an opera singer who had formerly married the father of Alfred Roy Carey. When the singer was three years old, the parents split.
In her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, Carey explored her complex relationship with her mother and sister, noting that she and her mother frequently battled and accused her sister of placing her in dangerous circumstances when a child.
Of her sister, she said, “emotionally and physically safer for me not to have any contact with.”
Still, Carey kept in touch with her mother, and for the second Christmas album the singer recorded a duet of O Come All Ye Faithful/Hallelujah Chorus.