Gia Carangi - Death

Death

In 1986 Carangi was diagnosed with AIDS, which was a newly recognized disease at the time. As her condition worsened, she was transferred to Philadelphia's Hahnemann University Hospital. Her mother stayed with her day and night, allowing virtually no visitors.

On November 18, 1986, Carangi, aged 26, died of AIDS-related complications. Her closed-casket funeral (recommended by the funeral director due to the ravages of AIDS, which was not properly understood at the time) was held on November 21 at a small funeral home in Philadelphia. Nobody from the fashion world attended, mainly because no one knew about her death until months after she had died. However, weeks later, Francesco Scavullo, Carangi's friend and confidant, sent a Mass card when he heard the news.

Read more about this topic:  Gia Carangi

Famous quotes containing the word death:

    There is no sorrow more grievous than the death of one’s spirit.
    —Chinese proverb.

    Zhaungzi.

    Go; and if that word have not quite killed thee,
    Ease me with death by bidding me got too.
    Oh, if it have, let my word work on me,
    And a just office on a murderer do.
    Except it be too late to kill me so,
    Being double dead: going, and bidding go.
    John Donne (1572–1631)

    We achieve “active” mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying to hospitals. But hospitals serve the convenience of staff not patients: we cannot be properly ill in a hospital, nor die in one decently; we can do so only among those who love and value us. The result is the institutionalized dehumanization of the ill, characteristic of our age.
    Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)