Mariah Carey has said her mother and sister died on the same day over the weekend.
The Grammy-winning singer, 55, told People magazine that in a “tragic turn of events” her sister, Alison, died following the death of her mother, Patricia.
It is not yet clear what caused their deaths.
“My heart is broken that I’ve lost my mother this past weekend,” Carey said in a statement to the magazine.
“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.”
The Hero singer’s mother, a Juilliard-trained opera singer and vocal coach, married aeronautical engineer Alfred Roy Carey in 1960. The couple had three children: Mariah, Alison and their brother Morgan.
The couple divorced when the singer was three years old.
Carey has spoken in the past of her complicated relationship with her mother and siblings, writing in her 2020 memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey that it was “emotionally and physically safer for me not to have any contact” with Alison or Morgan.
She described her relationship with her mother as a “prickly rope of pride, pain, shame, gratitude, jealousy, admiration and disappointment”.
“Like many aspects of my life, my journey with my mother has been full of contradictions and competing realities,” Carey wrote. “It’s never been only black-and-white — it’s been a whole rainbow of emotions.”
She added: “A complicated love tethers my heart to my mother’s.”
Despite the tumultuous relationship, the pair maintained contact and even recorded a duet of O Come All Ye Faithful/Hallelujah Chorus on a Christmas album in 2010.
Carey has said her mother was the inspiration for her becoming a professional singer.
“I would sing little tunes around the house, to my mother’s delight. And she always encouraged me,” she wrote in her memoir.
