The end of the end

 Alison’s last words

And the pain of an absent family

By David Baker

Posted Sept. 26, 2024

   Two different publications in two different countries each had stories with the same theme last week.

   In the Daily Mirror, a mass-circulation tabloid in Britain, the headline on a full page story two days after Alison died:“Mariah’s heartbreak.”

   And then the American supermarket magazine National Examiner in its issue dated September 23 ran a double-page spread with this on its front cover:

   This follows People Magazine’s story announcing the death of Mariah mother and sister on the same  day.  The story quoted Mariah as saying she wanted privacy.

    Isn’t that what everyone does when they want privacy - run to the media, in this case, with a story about how you are “heartbroken” partly over the death of the “ex-sister” you hadn’t had any contact with in 30 years?

  But it’s what Mariah did.  Because for this self-absorbed woman it’s always all about Mariah.

***

   Last month, one of Alison’s sons told me in a FB Messenger message that the family wanted Alison’s possessions. “And please be sure everything, phone, papers etc, is still there,” he wrote.

   Last week, after packing all this into five 38-liter plastic totes I went back to that Messenger thread.

Where it said “ This person is not available on Messenger.”

   That usually means the person seeing the message has been blocked.

   Then I sent a text to the last cell phone  number I have for him.  There has been no response.

  I will keep these items until the tenancy on Alison’s apartment expires at the end of October.  At that point I believe I can reasonably consider it abandoned property and will dispose of it accordingly.

*****

    Last month, the judge in Morgan Carey’s defamation lawsuit against Mariah Carey over statements about him in her memoir issued an order that depositions of both parties are to be completed by the end of January, and that a ’note of issue’ - a document stating the the plaintiff is ready for trial - must be filed  by the end of February.

   In the book, Mariah Carey claimed that in the 1980s Morgan Carey supplied illegal drugs while working in New York City nightclubs, and said that he had “…been in the system’ suggesting that he had been sent to prison.

   Morgan has denied both claims.

   The judge scheduled a ‘compliance conference’ for Feb. 25, 2025. 

*** 

 

   Sorting though and packing up Alison clothes and other possessions last week I found this note.

   For those viewing this on small screens it says: “The only thing worse than losing a partner is losing your children.”

   There’s nothing in it that shows when it was written or the name of the ‘partner’ she refers to, but the absence of her offspring in her life was clearly causing her pain.  She once said to me, “You’re the only family I have.”

   So sad.

*******

   It’s now clear that after after nine years with Alison, I will never know what happened to her remains and when  - or even if  - there will be any kind of memorial service for her.  The last time I saw her was shortly after she passed away.  A funeral director moved her from her bed into a body bag. He zipped it up - and she was gone.

   So I’m left with memories of a friend who, despite the pain she could never escape, was an extremely intelligent and sensitive soul, nothing like the image of a hapless drug addict that the public  - and her family members - have of her.

  As I told her one evening just before she became unable to communicate: There will always be a place in my heart for her.  She will never be forgotten. I told her that I loved her.  And in a barely audible whisper she said, “I love you.”

   Those were her last words.  By the next morning she had become totally unresponsive and did not speak again before she died.

Dying wish

 An open letter to Alison’s siblings

September, 2024

Dear Morgan,

Dear Mariah,

   As I write this I am at your sister Alison’s bedside in what will likely be the last days, or even hours, of her life.

   You both were informed of her impending death. If either of you had any thoughts of making even a small attempt to express regrets to her for cutting her out of your lives, it’s too late. By the time you read this she will probably be gone; free at last to find peace, her tortured soul forever free from earthly pain.

    In your book Mariah, you called Alison “damaged” and “very broken” then callously dismissed her as your “ex-sister,” accusing her, without presenting any evidence, of serious crimes against you. Your accusations were reported in headlines around the world.  Unable to dispute your baseless allegations - how do you prove something didn’t happen - Alison was reduced to tears by these cruel attacks.

   But it got a lot of attention for your book.

   Then, informed of Alison’s impending demise, you declined to at least speak to her. She died knowing that you knew her life was almost over and that right to the end you didn’t care.

   And you, Morgan, sold stories to newspapers and did TV interviews that depended on Alison’s misfortune. But when Alison sent you a ”How are you” text, your entire response was: ”If this is about $$, I don’t have any.”

   That appears to have been your last contact with Alison.  Six years ago.

   Then there is a movie script you were trying to sell, apparently based in part on a phone conversation with Alison in which you caused her great distress by asking repeated questions about the life-changing horror of her childhood at the hands of her satan-worshipping mother.  Alison learned about this proposed movie not from you, but when it was revealed during pre-trial discovery in your defamation lawsuit against your younger sister over statements about you in her book. 

   The proposed movie’s title? Devil’s Hollow.

   And now, since I started writing this post, Alison has died, leaving both of you to consider your relationship with your sister during her endless struggle to survive in a life that was cruelly destroyed almost before it began.

David Baker

Coxsackie, New York

******

   Mariah’s refusal to connect with Alison in the days before she died was not the first time Alison’s younger sister had remained silent while Alison was in a life-threatening condition.

   The first time was in 2015, when Alison was on life support following emergency surgery to stop a brain hemorrhage after she was hit in on the back of her head with a baseball bat and left for dead during a home invasion at her apartment on Long Island.

   Several members of her family - including her brother Morgan who flew from his home in Hawaii - visited Alison in a hospital in Albany, N.Y. 

  Mariah was not one of them. 

   The second time was in June, 2021, after Alison had emergency overnight surgery for a perforated intestinal ulcer. The surgeon gave her a no more that a 50 percent chance of survival, but after six weeks on two powerful antibiotics to beat sepsis she went home.

   Again, Mariah did not visit or call. 

   Now, in 2024, there was a third time, when the chance of survival wasn't 50 percent; it was zero and there was a last oppotunity to grant Alison her years-long wish.

   There won’t be a fourth time.  Ever.

**************

RIP Alison

 The death of Alison Carey

Final wishes and a distant family

By David Baker
Posted Sept. 12, 2024

    Few people like being a patient in a hospital and Alison was no exception. Every time she was hospitalized I would get calls from her saying, in a loud urgent whisper: “I can’t stand it! Get me out of here!”

   This wasn’t helping her recovery or the nurses who answered her frequent pressing of the call button:  They were glad when I arrived because, they said, Alison would be calm once I was there.

   So during each of her hospitalizations I would spend as much time as possible with her.  And although we didn’t know it until just before she was discharged after a brief stay at the end of July, she was near the end of her life.  She went home to her apartment on hospice care and died there three weeks later. 

 ******

    Alison was cremated - which she did not want. 

    Or was she?  I don’t know because none of her family members have told me. 

    Two days after she died she was taken from a funeral home near her apartment in Coxsackie to another funeral parlor near her childhood home on Long Island.  Beyond a suggestion by her youngest child that she might be cremated I know nothing about her final resting place.  So, was she cremated?  Or was she buried?  If so, where? 

     I tried to find out from one of her sons, asking in a text about her final arrangements and pointing out that no one had asked me if I knew of Alison wishes. His response?  “I’m not comfortable commenting on that.” 

   Then, showing the deep loss he feels for his penniless departed mother,  he continued:  “As far as all of her children know there was no will so all of her belongings pass to her next of kin. We’re gong to be  making arrangements to pick up her things but please be sure everything is still there.  Phone, papers etc.” 

    My choice would have been to donate her newer clothes to Goodwill, which is where she bought many of them, and what is left to to a recycling organization.  But sure, you can have them, along the rest of her “things”  

  If there wasn’t a funeral, what about a memorial service?  In an earlier text he wrote: “…there’ll be a private family ceremony for her.’ 

  In the words, I’m not invited.  Get lost.

   Real callous to someone who had been offering support to Alison constantly since 2015 and was with her right to the end.

****

   There’s a reason we have funerals; it allows relatives and friends to say goodbye to the person one last time an acknowledgement that helps people accept that he or she has gone.

   It’s also why there is usually a marked headstone where the remains are buried.  It’s why the remains of people who die abroad are brought home, to rest in a 6 -foot by 3-foot piece of ground that belongs exclusively, forever, to the departed person.  Tangible, visible evidence that the person existed.

   But apparently there will be none of that for Alison.  Just her ashes - and who knows what will happen to them.

   So Alison is removed from the face of the earth by some of her family members who, before last month, hadn’t seen her in years and evidently now just want to forget she ever existed.

****

   There’s another story this week  - this one in  Life & Style magazine - about how Mariah Carey regrets not getting in touch with Alison before she died.

   A “source” (almost certain to have been instructed by Mariah) is quoted saying: “Everyone’s focused on how guilty she should feel, but the reality is there’s a tremendous amount of sorrow over what might have been if her sister hadn’t gotten addicted to drugs.”

   Yes, and if as a child she hadn’t been subjected by her Satan-worshipping mother to unspeakable psychological and sexual abuse  - which is what caused her to seek an escape from the horrific childhood memories and led to her being diagnosed with  PTSD -  post traumatic stress disorder.

   Alison came home from the hospital to go on home hospice care on July 31 and I began giving her a prescribed dose of morphine every two hours around the clock.  That evening, I sent a text to one of Alison sons.  When he called back I told him that Alison was close to the end of her life.

    By the next day all of Alison’s children would have been informed, and at least one of them would have ben able to contact Mariah.

   Additionally, without any way of contacting Alison’s sister directly, on August 3 I sent a public tweet tagging Mariah that said Alison was on home hospice care.

   On August 10, all four of Alison’s children showed up - unannounced - at Alison’s home.  None of them, including the one believed to be closest to Mariah, said anything about Mariah wanting to contact her dying sister, even though it is virtually certain that by then she knew that Alison was near the end of her life. 

   Mariah may now be feeling guilty.  But if so, it would surely be because she hadn’t spoken to Alison since 1994 - despite her father’s dying wish that she do so - and evidently didn’t attempt to reach the sibling she publicly dismissed as her “ex-sister” even after learning that Alison was close to her death.

****

“Farewell Alison. May you now find peace,

     your tortured soul forever free of earthly pain.”

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