Mariah Carey is remembering her mom, Patricia. On Monday, August 24, the second anniversary of her mother's death, Carey, 57, shared a photo of her with Patricia, who died at age 87 in 2024.
In the picture, Patricia wore a green patterned turtleneck and sat behind her young daughter, whose hair was clipped on both sides of her head and who was seemingly putting food in her mouth. "Missing you," Carey captioned the Instagram post.
Patricia was born Patricia Hickey in 1937. She was an opera singer who trained at the Juilliard School of Music before joining the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center. In 1960, she married Mariah's father, Alfred Carey, who died in 2002 at 72. Mariah wrote in her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, that her mother, who was white, was condemned by her mother (Mariah's grandmother) for marrying a Black man.
Patricia gave birth to Mariah's siblings, Alison and Morgan, before Mariah was born in 1969. Patricia and Alfred divorced when Mariah was 3 years old.
On August 27, 2024, Mariah confirmed that both her mother and her sister, Alison, had died on the same day. "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," she said in a statement to People at the time.
"I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mom before she passed," she added. "I appreciate everyone's love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time."
Mariah wrote about her complicated relationship with Patricia and her siblings in The Meaning of Mariah Carey. She dedicated the book, in part, to her mother, writing, "And to Pat, my mother, who, through it all, I do believe actually did the best she could. I will love you the best I can, always."
In the book, she wrote about how she "deeply" loved her mother, but "ours is a story of betrayal and beauty. Of love and abandonment. Of sacrifice and survival." She wrote that their relationship "has caused me so much pain and confusion."
"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," Mariah wrote. She remembered her mother holding her talent against her from a young age, telling her after she was singing in the car, "You should only hope that one day you become half the singer I am."
"Still, to this day, what she said haunts and hurts me," the five-time Grammy winner said.
During a 2025 appearance on CBS Mornings, over a year after her mother's death, Mariah said that she "made peace" with Patricia before her death. "She said a lot of things that were very healing for what I needed. And I felt like that was the right thing to do," she said.
Mariah was also estranged from Alison at the time of her death. In 2021, Alison sued Mariah over her memoir. A month later, her estranged brother, Morgan, filed his own lawsuit.
(People)
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