How Mariah Carey’s estranged sister Alison who was diagnosed with HIV in 1990 spent last three weeks before she died in hospice care suffering with ‘internal organ problems’ but pair never reconciled

The terminally ill sister of pop megastar Mariah Carey went into hospice care just three weeks before she died, a close friend has revealed. 

The All I Want For Christmas Is You singer, 55, revealed on Monday that both her sister Alison, 63, and opera-singer mom Patricia, 87, passed away within hours of each other over the weekend. 

But while she spent time with her elderly mother before she passed away, it appears she did not spend time with her sister, as the pair never reconciled after decades-long troubled relationship. 

Heartbroken Carey said on Monday: ‘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. 

Failing to mention her sister, she added: ‘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.’ 

MailOnline has contacted Mariah Carey’s management for comment.  

Carey was estranged from Alison, a recovering drug addict who was diagnosed with HIV in 1990, for three decades. Alison’s close friend and carer Dave Baker said she had been struggling with her health in recent weeks.

He told The US Sun: ‘Alison was on home hospice care for the last three weeks of her life.’

He added that she had a problem with internal organs before continuing: ‘I have known her for nine years and as her friend and in recent months her carer I will miss her greatly.

‘Farewell Alison. May you now find peace, your tortured soul forever free from earthly pain.’

Dave separately told The Times Union: ”We knew it was coming. There were signs that she couldn’t go any further.’

Alison lived a tough life as a recovering drug addict with a HIV diagnosis. She worked as a prostitute in New York to make ends meet, and suffered from severe mental health episodes, pushing her famous sister further and further away.  

In 2016 Alison made an impassioned plea to her famous sibling with DailyMail.com, begging her to mend the rift between them and help save her life, saying: ‘Mariah I love you, I desperately need your help.’

She was in dire need of financial support as she battled back to health following a devastating home invasion attack that left her brain damaged and seriously ill. She had been in and out of the hospital.

Alison spent a short time at a mental hospital in New York after a bizarre episode in the street near her home.

‘Because Mariah has not found it in her heart to help Alison get the care she requires there are times when Alison forgets or is unable to take her medication and this sometimes precipitates problematic behavior’, Alison and Mariah’s brother Morgan revealed in 2018. 

He said: ‘Alison was institutionalized for observation after being found wandering in the street barefoot and partially dressed, causing the police to be concerned.

‘Her behavior was caused as a result of damage done in the attack and her having missed the medications she was taking.’

Morgan says that due to the severe brain damage, Alison suffers from memory loss, seizures, and occasional periods  loss of consciousness.

‘Alison’s brain scans show severe damage,’ he explains.

Alison was released from the mental health facility after a few weeks.

Morgan added: ‘The worst is yet to come and Mariah has it in her power to at least ensure a soft landing and avoid a life time of regret about missing this opportunity to forgive and help her only sister.’

‘I would be hopeful, although I am not encouraged by the past, that Mariah would step up because she’s in a position to step up.

‘We’re talking about small change to these people, her fiancé is a billionaire.

‘The least they could do is put Alison in a good hospital and make sure she gets the care she needs.

‘Mariah is the one person in the family who could actually make a real meaningful difference to Alison’s life.’

Morgan says he flew from Maui last August to be at his sister’s bedside when she took a turn for the worse, but Alison’s mother and sister didn’t show. It was then that he took a video of her in the hospital.

‘It was painful for her to speak, you could hear the raspiness in her breath, she had had a tube down her throat for so long.

‘She looked like she had been beaten down by this whole experience, her eyes were foggy, her skin jaundice and she had very little motor control.

‘Every effort, every movement was very labored and painful and difficult – but she was very much alive.

‘I wanted to be able to prove that she was lucid, that she understood who she was, where she was, what was going on around her.

‘I wanted people to see that she was a human being and that someone else shouldn’t have the decision to decide whether she live or die.’

Despite coming close to death Alison pulled through and made a miraculous recovery.

Morgan was successful in having the ‘do not resuscitate order’ dropped. 

In a third video taken on September 23, 2015 and viewed by Daily Mail Online, Alison is lucid as she is interviewed by a member of the staff of a New York hospital. She clearing states her name, date of birth and names Morgan Carey as her health care proxy. She also confirms that she wants  the DNR be removed from her file.

Alison recently left hospital and was being cared for by a Patient Advocate and staying at the advocate’s home in New York.

‘But she is being scheduled for surgery on her spine and she has faces more surgery on her brain, which is going to be tough.

‘She’s also going to drug addiction meetings and visiting with her sponsor which is good. 

Morgan said in the past 12 months, following the alleged attack by a home invader at her New York home in April last year, Alison had several brain surgeries, an operation on her spleen, a hip replacement and periods of physical rehabilitation.  

‘She was a train wreck,’ Morgan recalls. ‘And right now she’s on several different medications to keep her seizures under control, she’s fallen down several times and had bad injuries to her head because of her seizures.

‘She also taking her HIV meds and anti-inflammatory meds and whatever else she’s on. So yes she’s on the mend, but still needs a lot of help.’

The biggest problem, Morgan says, is the mounting medical bills.

He says he’d love to be able to pay them but he can’t afford to cover them all.

‘It’s been a constant battle, the insurance would run out, the Medicare would run out, we are always fighting that fight to just get these bills paid by Medicare,’ he said.

Alison has four children but while they have tried to help Morgan says they have always had a difficult relationship with their mother due to her drug addiction and prostitution past.

Alison revealed she worked as a prostitute in New York as a young woman to clothe and feed her family before Mariah found fame.

He said: ‘It has to be real hard growing up knowing your mother is an addict and a prostitute, I can’t even imagine putting myself in their shoes.

‘But Alison did the best she could for her kids, was her best great, no, but she did the best she could.’

Morgan says Alison inherited $1.6million from her father Alfred Carey, when he died in 2002, and she set up trust funds for her children. The rest of the money she has squandered on her drug addiction.

He says he understands that Mariah – who hasn’t spoken to her sister properly since they had a huge argument in 1994 – may not want to hand money to a drug addict through fear it will simply enable her.

But he adds: ‘Look me personally I’m not going to hand my sister Alison a penny directly, but if I can give money to the person giving her care, I’m going to do it.  

‘Is there a way of setting up a medical fund? You don’t put cash in an addict’s hands but you can make sure that their basic medical care is met, it’s that simple.

‘Mariah can easily manage this and still keep her distance.

‘If she wants to hold her grudge, then let her hold her grudge.’

He added: ‘We just want to make Alison as comfortable as possible and to enjoy some kind of quality of life, I’m trying to do my best to help her.’

In 2021 Alison sued Mariah for $1.25million, claiming her 2020 tell-all memoir The Meaning Of Mariah Carey caused ‘immense emotional distress.’

Alison said that Mariah lied about her older sibling drugging her and her older brother Morgan abusing her as a child in the book.

The elder Ms. Carey – who described herself as ‘profoundly damaged’ – said that the Butterfly singer fabricated the stories ‘to promote sales of her book’ and offered no ‘evidence to substantiate’ her claims, according to legal documents obtained by TMZ.

Mariah recalls her troubled childhood in the chapter ‘Dandelion Tea,’ claiming Alison ‘gave her Valium, tried to pimp her out and threw a cup of boiling hot tea on her causing third-degree burns’ at 12-years-old, according to Alison’s Manhattan Supreme Court summons filed Monday.

Alison, who is representing herself in the case, says the Honey songstress made the untrue claims despite knowing the damage it would cause her, given her personal trauma and health troubles.

She cited trauma stemming from the alleged ‘satanic’ abuse she suffered at the hands of their mother Patricia, which are the subject of another suit Alison Carey filed against her mom last year, per Page Six.

She also said Mariah was aware her sister was suffering from spine and digestive disorders and a traumatic brain injury, short term memory problems and vision problems after being attacked in 2015 in an ‘unsolved home invasion.’

Alison – who was HIV+ – was arrested for soliciting prostitution in the past – also said she was struggling with alcohol abuse after having been sober for ‘a long time.’

With this in mind, Alison says her famous sister maliciously ‘used her status as a public figure to attack her penniless sister, generating sensational headlines describing lurid claims to promote sales of her book.’ 

The elder Ms. Carey asked for restitution for ‘intentional infliction of immense emotional distress caused by defendant’s heartless, vicious, vindictive, despicable and totally unnecessary public humiliation of defendant’s already profoundly damaged older sister.’

She said she sent Mariah’s legal team an offer to settle on January 8th but never heard back, according to the court docs.

Morgan said he planned to sue during a November 2020 conversation with The Sun, calling his sister’s recollections ‘delusional.’

In the book she also claims Morgan was hired to kill someone for $30,000, but never went through with the job. 

‘It’s heartbreaking to witness my little sister’s descent into this hatefully delusional revisionist rant because it is so reminiscent of her unhinged behavior during her first breakdown,’ he said.

‘The so-called ‘memoir’ is laden with lies, distortions and gross revisionism from beginning to end, and I can prove it.

‘When I reveal the truth, the facts and supporting evidence, it will be a very harsh pill for she and her publishers to swallow and rest assured I will be filing a lawsuit.’ 

In a passage in her book Carey said of her sister Allison: ‘When I was 12 years old, my sister drugged me with valium, offered me a pinky nail full of cocaine, inflicted me with third degree burns and tried to sell me out to a pimp.’

Winfrey, on The Oprah Conversation, asked the singer about why she feels her siblings who she described as ‘extremely violent’ – treated her as such to which the singer insisted they were ‘damaged’.

Mariah said of the trio: ‘We don’t even really know each other, and that’s the thing. 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. But again, I wasn’t there. I was dropped into this world and I literally felt like an outsider amongst my own family.’