Mariah Carey had a complicated relationship with her late sister Alison Carey, who died in August on the same day as their mother, Patricia Carey.
“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 singer said in a statement.
The Grammy winner had two older siblings, Alison and Morgan Carey, both of whom the singer had been estranged from for years.
Here’s what we know about the songstress’ upbringing and what caused the rift with her late sister.
Before Alison’s passing, Mariah hadn’t seen her sister in decades, according to Alison’s friend and advocate, David Baker.
Alison “had a tough life” before she died in Coxsackie, New York, the United States, Baker told People.
“We saw it coming, but it’s still a shock,” Baker says. “She got ill fairly quickly and a month later, she’s gone.”
Mariah, Morgan and Alison grew up on Long Island.
Their parents, Alfred and Patricia, got divorced when Mariah was three years old, and Mariah went to live with her mother while her siblings stayed with their father.
“We don’t even really know each other ... we didn’t grow up together, but we did. Like, they were on their journeys, by the time I got into the world, they had already been damaged, in my opinion,” Mariah told Oprah Winfrey on The Oprah Conversation.
“But again, I wasn’t there. I was dropped into this world and I literally felt like an outsider amongst my own family.”
Mariah also said she believes her siblings resented her and felt her life was “easier” growing up with their mother.
In Mariah’s memoir, The Meaning Of Mariah Carey, the singer described Alison as “the most brilliant and broken person I have ever known” but also “deeply wounded.”
Those wounds, Mariah went on to explain, came from Alison witnessing “things a child should never see.”
“I do know that what she experienced damaged and derailed her girlhood,” Mariah wrote.
“She was fully aware when the family unit unravelled and our parents turned on each other; she absorbed the full pain of a family coming undone.”
In the book, she also alleged Alison was a drug addict and even tried to encourage Mariah to do drugs as a child.
“My sister drugged me with Valium, offered me a pinky nail full of cocaine, inflicted me with third-degree burns,” she wrote in the book. She also alleged Alison “tried to sell me out to a pimp.”
In 2021, after the release of Mariah’s memoir, Alison sued her famous sister for US$1.25mil for “immense emotional distress” and denied the book’s allegations.
“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,” per court documents obtained by Variety.
After Alison filed lawsuit, Morgan also filed a defamation suit against Mariah in March 2021, claiming he was being “falsely characterised.”
“Her attempt to falsely characterise plaintiff as equally violent as their father, and her subsequent commentary on police relations with Black people was only the beginning of defendant Mariah Carey’s desperate attempt to vilify plaintiff, play the victim card and curry favour with the Black Lives Matter movement,” read the complaint, per USA Today.
The lawsuit is still pending according to People, though a judge tossed most of its claims, and Mariah and Morgan are seemingly estranged. He now lives in Italy with his wife.
The causes of death for both Alison and Patricia Carey have not yet been revealed. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
