This weekend, Jozef and I attended a memorial for Sam Nordquist, a twenty-four-year-old biracial trans man who was murdered in our state.

It was an interfaith event, with many different religious leaders speaking. One speaker, a unitarian universalist minister, recited Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese.”

You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves.

Since that night, I keep returning to those lines. I think about every photograph of Sam that I’ve seen: the softness of his body, his gentle face. I think about what brought Sam to New York—love, his pursuit of love.

Sam Nordquist let the soft animal of his body love what it loves. Then he was tortured and murdered—acts of extreme hate.

The Ontario County Assistant District Attorney, Kelly Wolford, said prosecutors are charging the seven suspects with first-degree murder—not hate crimes—because first-degree murder carries the heaviest penalties. She said, “A hate crime would make this charge about Sam’s gender or about Sam’s race, and it’s so much bigger. To limit us to a hate crime would be an injustice to Sam. Sam deserves to have his story told in its entirety.”1

I find myself frustrated by Wolford’s insistence on limitations, by her usage of the word “or.” This logic is different from earlier statements that there was no evidence of a hate crime. A person could be charged with both first-degree murder and hate crimes. These people could be charged with both first-degree murder and hate crimes. The idea that Sam, Sam’s race, and Sam’s gender are all distinct, able to be separated by “or,” is what fails to capture the complexities of Sam’s life and death. Not the charges of hate crimes—or lack thereof. Wolford suggests, too, that Sam’s “story” is that of his torture and murder, not that of his life. In other words, she seems to be doing exactly what she says she is fighting not to do—she is “limit[ing]” Sam’s life and death.

She is limiting his life and death to his death. His gender, his race, those were parts of Sam’s identity. Parts of his life. Why should his torture and murder be “bigger” than his life?

Wolford’s line of thinking lends itself well to publications like the Nw Yrk Tmes, which over the course of two days ran the article under three headlines:2

• “Trans Man Killed in New York Was Tortured for Two Months, Police Say”

• “Man Killed in New York Was Tortured for More Than a Month, Police Say”

• “Person Killed in New York Was Tortured for More Than a Month, Police Say”

To the Tmes, the story of Sam Nordquist’s death—because God knows they aren’t talking about his life—is disconnected from his gender identity.

Linda Nordquist, Sam’s mother, said, “Sam may be alive today if they [the authorities] would have done their jobs.”3 The Nordquist family had requested two wellness checks for Sam, who had gone to a local social services agency for help at one point but not returned for a follow-up.

Linda and Kayla Nordquist asked a New York state trooper to file a missing person’s report and say that the state troopers’ office declined. Kayla said, “She [the state trooper] said I need to stop watching so much TV, something about it not being a true crime episode. I need to stop watching so much TV and that they don't pass out missing people flyers.”4

The state troopers claim that they “took appropriate investigative steps.”5 But it wasn’t until the Nordquist family filed a national missing person’s report at their local police station in Minnesota that police began investigating.

Do we have to ask ourselves why law enforcement in a fascist police state responded the way they did? If so, Kayla Nordquist raised that question herself, so let’s follow her lead:

“When I called, I said ‘my transgender brother,’ they knew that. So either they didn't conduct this wellness check because of him being transgender. Or I’m thinking because he’s transgender people are like, ‘Oh, he’s transgender, which makes him a man so he should man up.’”6

The assistant district attorney, the T*mes, the cops—people with state-sanctioned authority seem dedicated to erasing Sam’s transness.

In the car after the memorial, Jo was agitated by the structure of the event, which was largely a series of faith leaders sharing what their respective religions have to say about 1) death and grieving, and 2) acceptance of people who aren’t part of said religions.

“I don’t care where all these people think Sam went after his death,” Jo said. “I don’t find the idea of heaven comforting.”

I didn’t respond the way I should have. I kept reiterating that I had a different experience of the event. Which in some ways, I did. I don’t mind the idea of heaven, find that it can be comforting to think about a person’s soul being at peace—especially after enduring something as horrific as what Sam suffered.

In other ways, I had similar frustrations with the event. One of the first speakers was an indigenous, two-spirit, transmasculine community leader who specifically said in his speech that, for the sake of the transgender people in the room, he would not discuss any of the specific details of Sam’s death. Later, one of the faith leaders—who gave what seemed most like a eulogy, and who was cisgender—did discuss those details in her remarks. I was decisively not comforted by that; it seemed like she felt that making the other cis people in the room uncomfortable by confronting them with the reality of Sam’s death was more important than ensuring the comfort of the trans people in the room, who were there to celebrate Sam’s life.

I don’t know exactly why I felt the need to defend the event against Jo’s valid criticism. I suspect it was because I was upset and desperately wanted not to feel that way after what was meant to be a healing experience. So I intellectualized and dismissed Jo’s feelings. I tried to salvage some modicum of comfort for myself in what was a deeply uncomfortable time.

What I should’ve said was, “What would feel comforting to you right now?” I’m sorry, Jo, that I didn’t ask.

Comfort is hard to come by these days. I struggle to find it for myself, let alone for other people. But I am committed to trying. I am committed to doing better. For myself right now, that means getting stoned in the evenings and doing various crafts. For others—I will ask what they need and offer what I can. Especially for the trans people in my life (including myself).

Though Jozef and I both had critiques of the event, the memorial we attended was a heartfelt community gathering with good intentions and—vitally—the input of queer and trans people during its planning. We celebrated Sam’s life for its complexities, acknowledging the varied facets of his identity that we knew and holding space for all the many parts of him we did not know.

And in the current political and cultural climate, I think that counts for a lot.