It’s so hard to know where to start this. By now, the news and circumstances of the tragic and unimaginable death of Sam Nordquist, a Black trans man from Minnesota, have been widely reported on, with many of those reports including the names and actions of the people who tortured and murdered him. And I’m just not sure we need to rehash all of the grisly details of what happened to Sam or what the police found in the hotel room where he was kept or how they found his body. I think, instead, we should give ourselves the space to mourn.

When the news about what happened to Sam was first released, the first picture I saw of him reminded me of all the bigger boys I grew up with from my neighborhood and the neighborhoods surrounding us. The tattoos, the piercings, the gold chain, and the baggy clothes with that very faint mustache coming in at all times, that sometimes smirk like he was holding onto a secret, and that perpetual glint of sweetness in his eyes. Maybe you’ve known them, too — the guys who always say “Hi” to everyone on the street whether they know you or not, the ones who are always willing to lend a helping hand when someone needs it, the ones who help stop the ice cream truck for the smaller kids so they don’t have to run after it anymore. As more pictures of Sam came out, the more he reminded me of these guys I grew up with, the ones who taught me that masculinity is not the rejection of care or caring but the soft balance of performing both in a way that ensures mutual growth and a lot of love.

In the almost week since the news broke, lots of information has come out confirming my impressions of Sam since seeing his pictures for the first time. And I believe what we know about him now is how he should be remembered, even if we didn’t all know him personally. He is described everywhere as a 24-year-old Black trans man, but he was also so much more than that — he lived an entire life every day, spoke to and hung out with his friends, spent time with his family, worked with and cared for others, and like so many of us, loved being on the internet, being decked out in his favorite clothes and sneakers, and smoking weed.

According to Sam’s mother, Linda Nordquist, in an early interview after Sam’s death was reported by the police, Sam “would give you the shirt off his back. [He was] Very kind, loved his family, loved his nieces and nephew, very outgoing, worked hard.” In another interview, Linda said about Sam, “He was the best kind of silly weirdo you could have. He always brought a smile to ya, trying to be a jokester.” Along with his mother, Sam worked at a group home for people with disabilities. According to Linda, Sam found “fulfillment” working with “vulnerable adults”: “He just had a joy with it,” she said. Linda told reporters that Sam loved to dance so much that he would take his clients from the home on outings to go dancing, so they could share in the fun of it together. Linda and Sam’s sister, Kayla Nordquist, also described Sam as a “loving uncle” to Kayla’s young children, his nieces and nephew.

Kayla added that although Sam was somewhat shy, he loved making new friends and had several close friendships with his coworkers at the home for people with disabilities and with people he met through TikTok, video games, and the personal streaming site, Liveme. One of those friends, Matt Partlow, reaffirmed everything his family said about him: “[H]e was such an amazing friend, full of life. There is nobody like him and he didn’t deserve none of this. All he wanted was love. It’s all he wanted.” Partlow said Sam loved Puma sweatsuits and being on TikTok, where he often posted videos of his own. With Partlow, Sam shared a love of cooking and experimenting in the kitchen. Sam would share meals he dreamed of with Partlow and the two of them would do their best to recreate them together. In a post by trans activist Jersey Noah on X, Noah quoted an unnamed friend of Sam’s as saying: “Sam was a great friend, always there for you. He was a big stoner so I ask anyone who smokes to roll a fatty in his honor. He’d do anything to make you laugh.”

Sam’s mother and sister also expressed that Sam was a big animal lover who loved spending time with his family outside. He had two adopted cats named Pumpkin and Storm, and he loved to visit the waterfalls in the wilderness surrounding Oakdale, where he and his family lived. Sam’s love for nature was so well-known by the family that it’s part of what tipped them off that something may be wrong in the first place (his phone’s location kept showing that he hadn’t left his motel room for weeks prior to his death). According to Linda and Kayla, the family would visit zoos together all over the Midwest, and Sam and Linda kept a collection of stuffed animals that they gathered from their travels together.

Over the past week since the details of Sam’s death emerged, LGBTQ people and allies across the country have held vigils in several towns in upstate New York and in St. Paul and Red Wing, Minnesota, among others. A vigil in Los Angeles is planned for Friday, February 21. Similarly, support for Sam and his family has rightfully erupted on every corner of the internet. If you type his name into any search box on any social media application, you’ll be met with dozens and dozens of hand-drawn images of Sam or other art depicting him as he would have liked to be seen, loving messages and eulogies, and tons of other posts remembering him for who he was, who he loved, and how he lived. His family also started a GoFundMe to help his mother, sister, and brother as they spend time in upstate New York while the investigation is still underway, and everyone should donate to that right now.

In the same way it was hard to know where to start, it’s also difficult to know where to end. Sam deserved to keep living this life every day, and he deserved to grow up even further, to grow old, to achieve his goals, and get every single thing he desired. All trans people deserve this, and most importantly, they deserve to be supported by everyone around them in the pursuit of attaining the lives that will make the happiest and healthiest versions of themselves. That we have to keep writing that exact sentence and expressing that exact sentiment is a failure on all of our parts, and we should be doing everything in our power to rectify that failure and create the kind of world where these things stop happening to the most vulnerable amongst us.

We can’t take back losing the universe that Sam was, but we can bear witness to it, at the very least. So, let’s do that. I’ll end with part of a caption from one of his TikTok videos that has been posted to social media a few times over the past week:

“…i can now
visualize that a life full of love
happiness, and peace is what i
want for my future.
Proud to
be #transman
believe in
yourself anything can happen just
have faith and most importantly
stay true to yourself…”

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