Despite rumors swirling around and numerous social media posts, Cissy Houston, gospel legend the mother of the late Whitney Houston is still alive. The rumor first started from gospel singer Earnest Pugh when he shook up the Internet Wednesday with a now-scrubbed post about the "passing" of Cissy Houston. Cissy is also a singing legend, Dionne Warwick's aunt. And Ms. Warwick, who has been known to let people know exactly what is on her mind via her social media, took to Twitter to call BS and put to rest all the rumor nonsense.
Dionne told the world Cissy is still with us, adding "This Earnest Pugh needs to get a life and stay out of other people's lives!"
Friend of the Houston family and fellow Gospel singer Kim Burrell echoed the good news, saying, "Please respect her life as she continues to live. She's home. Thank you all."
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Houston watched her talented daughter’s rise to fame, her battle with addiction, and had to deal with her death in front of the whole world. She also witnessed her granddaughter’s death in an uncannily similar way.
But Cissy isn't without her own health struggles.
As reported back in 2018, Cissy Houston has been battling dementia. "She's in the early stages of dementia," a source close to the family told Radar. "She repeats herself a lot and doesn't remember what she says. She just says she's getting old."
This report came out just after the documentary, Whitney, which revealed that Whitney Houston and Cissy's other child, Gary Houston, were molested by their cousin, Dee Dee Warwick, when they were children. Gary Houston shared this for the first time in the documentary, and the 84-year-old matriarch did not have any idea that it was happening
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Dee Dee Warwick, who passed away in 2008, was a Grammy-nominated singer who sang backup for legends like Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin. Dee Dee is the sister of Dionne Warwick, and they are both nieces of Cissy Houston. Both Cissy and Dionne came out about the claims made by her son, stating that they are "unfathomable."
According to the National Institutes on Aging, dementia is the loss of cognitive functioning — thinking, remembering, and reasoning — to such an extent that it interferes with a person's daily life and activities. Some people with dementia cannot control their emotions, and their personalities may change. Dementia ranges in severity from the mildest stage, when it is just beginning to affect a person's functioning, to the most severe stage, when the person must depend completely on others for basic activities of living.
The symptoms of dementia can vary and may include:
- Experiencing memory loss, poor judgment, and confusion
- Difficulty speaking, understanding and expressing thoughts, or reading and writing
- Wandering and getting lost in a familiar neighborhood
- Trouble handling money responsibly and paying bills
- Repeating questions
- Using unusual words to refer to familiar objects
- Taking longer to complete normal daily tasks
- Losing interest in normal daily activities or events
- Hallucinating or experiencing delusions or paranoia
- Acting impulsively
- Not caring about other people’s feelings
- Losing balance and problems with movement
While we don't know the extent of Cissy's dementia, we do remember when she recalled when she heard the news that her daughter passed away. Cissy recalled the devastating night when she was home alone, and she received a frantic phone call from her son Gary Houston. All she could make out was "Nippy," her family's nickname for Whitney.
Cissy confessed that she was annoyed with Gary for blabbering and told him to get to the point. It was then that he told the news that broke Cissy's heart into a million pieces. Whitney was dead. Cissy remembered:
"I was a wreck, just a wreck. And just like that, my heart broke all over again."
