KUALA LUMPUR: American Grammy-winning singer Mariah Carey lost her mother and sister on the same day last weekend.
The 55-year-old artiste shared the unfortunate news yesterday, according to People Online.
"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.
"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," she said in the news report.
Carey did not disclose the cause of their deaths or their ages.
It was reported that the singer had a complicated relationship with her mother, Patricia.
In her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, she wrote: "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."
Her relationship with her sister Alison was also not a bed of roses as she wrote in the same memoir that it was, at least at the time, "emotionally and physically safer for me not to have any contact" with her or (her brother) Morgan.
Mariah and her two siblings were the three children of Patricia and Alfred Carey, who divorced when the singer was only 3 years old.
Her father, who died about 20 years ago, was reportedly not very involved in her childhood.