Mariah Carey lost her mother, Patricia Hickey Carey, and her older sister, Alison, during the same weekend. A painful coincidence, because the two deaths, whose precise causes are not known, were not linked. “I am heartbroken by the loss of my mother this past weekend. Unfortunately, in a tragic turn of events, my sister lost her life on the same day,” Mariah Carey said Monday. has People.
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The formula, intentional or not, reflects a complex family situation: the singer of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” seems to have “broken heart” only by the death of her mother, that of her sister becoming almost an incident. However, if the bonds between the two sisters were strained, the one that the singer had maintained with her mother had not always been at its best, far from it.
As Mariah Carey had given a glimpse in her autobiography, The Truth by Mariah Carey(2021, Kero editions), things had not been easy either with his brother Morgan or with their father, Alfred Roy Carey, who died in 2002.
The daughter of a mixed-race couple who suffered domestic violence, Mariah Carey grew up in a dysfunctional family, whose mother was a singer. Her parents divorced after thirteen years of marriage, when the future international star was 3 years old.
Patricia Carey, a jealous mother
Mariah Carey was exposed to music at a very young age: her mother, Patricia, born in 1937, had been an opera singer and singing teacher, trained at the prestigious Juilliard school. However, she had interrupted her career after the birth of her three children.
The gift and shared passion for music, which could have brought mother and daughter closer, was in fact a source of tension, at least for a long time. Professional jealousy “is part of success, but when the person in question is your mother and the jealousy comes out at such a young age, it’s particularly painful,” the five-time Grammy Award-winning singer had explained.
However, their relationship “has never been black and white, it’s been a rainbow of emotions,” the star also wrote in her autobiography, explaining: “Like many aspects of my life, my journey with my mother has been filled with contradictions and competing realities.” “Our relationship is a thorny thread of pride, pain, shame, gratitude, jealousy, admiration and disappointment,” the proud mother of 12-year-old twins explains.
The daughter had nevertheless invited the mother to sing a duet with her on her 2010 Christmas album.
However, and Mariah Carey was pleased about this, before Patricia’s death, they had reconnected and she was with her when she died. “I feel blessed to have been able to spend the last week with my mother before she passed away,” the singer assured.
Allison, the destroyed older sister
On the other hand, according to the confidences of Dave Baker, a close friend of Alison, US SunMariah Carey reportedly made no gesture toward her older sister, even after the latter was “placed in hospice care” at home for her final three weeks. “A phone call or, better yet, a video call [de Mariah] would have meant a lot to Alison. But he never came, he said. The callous rejection added more pain to Alison’s pain. She talked about it frequently. She wondered if Mariah or any of her loved ones would come to his funeral.
The feud between the eldest and the eight-year-old junior was quite intense. Also in her autobiography, Mariah Carey claimed that Alison had “drugged her with Valium” when she was 12, “given her a pinky finger full of cocaine” when she was 20. She had also “inflicted third-degree burns on her and tried to sell (her) to a pimp”. While participating in a show with Oprah Winfrey, in 2020 when her memoir was published in the United States, Mariah Carey referred to Alison as her “ex-sister”.
Adrift, Alison had been arrested in 2016 for prostitution. She gave interviews to the press from time to time to talk about Mariah Carey. Which she didn’t really appreciate.
The “Hero” singer had considered that, “emotionally and physically”, it was safer for her “not to have contact” with her or Morgan, their brother.
The latter, feeling denigrated in his sister’s book, filed a lawsuit against her seeking compensation, without much success. And the singer-songwriter responded by attacking him in turn before the Manhattan Supreme Court, insisting that everything she said was “true.”
Mariah Carey has asked for privacy, but all eyes are on the star who holds the record for most Billboard Hot 100 number one singles by a solo artist with 19 songs, and has sold more than 220 million records worldwide.
