Mariah Carey is still struggling to find the words to aptly express her sentiments on Whitney Houston's death."I'm almost incapable to talking about this still, I think we all are," she told Robin Roberts on "Good Morning America" Tuesday. "It's very heavy emotionally."
The diva, 41, explained that their careers, which both found meteoric rises in the '90s, may have been neck-and-neck, but the pair's friendship was something that went beyond the music charts.
"I don't think people could ever really understand our relationship," she said. "There was always this supposed rivalry in the beginning and then we did the duet and became friends.
"I saw her towards the end. I loved her. We all loved her and we were all inspired by her."
Carey and Houston famously recorded the hit "When You Believe" together in 1998.
The singer joined a number of other A-list celebrities - including Oprah Winfrey, Kevin Costner and Alicia Keys - last week for Houston's funeral services in New Jersey.
"It was such a class act the way she went out and the way her family dealt with it," she said of the "home-going" services. "It was beautiful."
Carey also addressed the health crisis that has been surrounding her own immediate family, with husband Nick Cannon's series of recent hospitalizations.
In early January, Cannon, 31, was treated for kidney failure while the couple was spending family time with their 9-month-old twins in Aspen, Colo. He was recently back in the hospital again for two blood clots found in his lungs and an enlarged ventricle on the right side of his heart.
"We didn't know how big a deal it was at that moment," she said of Cannon's health scare. "It was a gradual thing. We ended up in a couple hospitals this year already."
But Carey has no doubts that Cannon will bounce back just fine.
"The thing is, he's a young healthy person," she said. "It's about changing the lifestyle ... and just an awareness of what can really happen to you no matter how young or in great shape you are.
"I think, like he always does, he's going to turn something that happened into a positive thing."
Source:nydailynews.com