We had to answer questions that none of us knew the answer to, like whether Andy wanted to be buried or cremated. We racked our brains for comments or observations that he may have made at some point on the subject, eventually deciding on cremation so that all of us could have part of Andy to honor and remember.
Bishop Gene was tasked with finding a funeral home that, despite the plans to cremate, would ensure that any treatment of Andy’s body would respect his gender identity. Frequently, after a trans person dies, we see their lives desecrated. One more indignity on top of the ultimate injustice. Trans people are often misgendered, misnamed, and sometimes even “de-transitioned” in their presentation by funeral homes, dressed up as their sex assigned at birth rather than their gender identity. One last cruel and tragic rebuke of the life they had fought to build for themselves.
“We can’t let Andy be disrespected,” I instructed Bishop Gene, who was clearly surprised and maddened to learn that this was something that trans people had to even think about. With some research and detective work, we managed to find a funeral home that assured us that they would honor Andy and his gender identity.
After two days of planning, on a humid August Saturday, six days after our wedding, three hundred friends, coworkers, family members, and even some strangers—people who never met Andy, but who benefited from his work—joined together for a funeral service just a few blocks from our apartment.
The funeral would be the first time in more than a month that I would not be rushing around, taking care of someone or something. My mind was finally clear of a to-do list—of responsibilities and others’ needs—and the thought of actually having to grapple with my own emotions frightened me. The funeral would be the beginning of my own grieving process.
Like the weekend before, Bishop Gene presided. He wore the same white, red, and gold vestments from the wedding ceremony, declaring that both gatherings were a celebration of life and love. We sang “Here I Am Lord,” a Presbyterian hymn that Andy and I both discovered a year before had been our favorite hymn growing up as active members of our local Presbyterian churches.
I asked three of Andy’s best friends to eulogize him. His friend Fitz spoke about the preservation of energy, that matter is neither created nor destroyed, and that Andy continued on within the universe for eternity. Kelsey talked about the unique and binding journey that had joined them as “brothers,” together struggling with their gender identity, coming out, and transitioning in college. Kellan, one of Andy’s best friends and his “partner in crime” in all things LGBTQ health–related, talked about the lifesaving legacy Andy left behind and his selflessness through it all.
In one of the most jarringly moving moments, Kellan invited the entire sanctuary to stand up and applaud the small picture of Andy in front of the stage. During his life, Andy had never gotten the recognition for his game-changing work, but as the crowd rose from their seats and proceeded to applaud and cheer for five minutes straight, I knew that Andy was watching, both cringing and appreciating it all at the same time.
Andy isn’t gone, I thought. He lives on in the change he brought to this world.
Andy’s humility was so great in life that it took his death for me to fully understand the breadth and depth of his contributions to the community. Tributes came flooding in from elected officials and city councils across the country praising Andy for his help in expanding health access for LGBTQ people in their communities. Legislation protecting LGBTQ youth from discrimination in federally funded homeless shelters was introduced in the U.S. Senate, with the prime sponsor crediting Andy for making the bill possible.
Transgender people from across the country sent me messages and stories of their interactions with Andy. One transgender woman from Colorado whom I met at a conference had been able to transition, much like me, because Andy had helped advocates in her home state secure protections from discrimination in health insurance. She began crying as she described Andy, someone she barely knew, as an almost godlike figure in her life.
During the first two weeks after the funeral, everything still felt “temporary.” I expected Andy to come through the door at any moment. But eventually the shock gave way to the grief that comes a few weeks in, when you fully realize the person is not just away on a trip. That they are gone and never coming back.
The smallest things would set me off. Random daily tasks would instantly trigger memories, particularly of the last month of pain and chaos. The flashbacks would leave me breathless and shaking. I never knew what would do it. It could be the purr of our cat Waffles, who still lived with me, or something as small as getting on the elevator in our apartment building.
He felt so present and so far away all at the same time. While our friends had cleaned out our closets of many of Andy’s clothes, Waffles slept every night on a pile that remained. I’d hear Andy’s voice calling from around the corner in our apartment for me to come because dinner was ready. I’d hear his breathing as I went to sleep.
I started texting daily with Andy’s mom. Through my relationship with Andy, and his battle with cancer, I had gained a family. As difficult as it was for me, my heart ached for what his parents had to go through. No parent should have to watch their child pass away. And I worried that I would be a reminder of what they had lost. But in the days after Andy’s passing, his parents made clear to me that I would forever be their daughter.
With time, they also made it clear that they’d understand if I moved on. When they talked about me remaining their daughter, they increasingly included the addition of any future partner. They didn’t want me to feel any pressure or worry that I’d have to choose between my new family and a new partner.
When my friends would ask me about dating again, I’d flippantly say, “I’m twenty-four, transgender, and a widow…that’s a lot for someone in this society to handle.” But the truth is that I really wasn’t interested. Even as time passed, new love was the one thing I wasn’t in a hurry to find.
I’ve never believed that there is only one person in this world for everyone; chance wouldn’t allow all of us to find that person in a world of five billion people with varying cultures, geography, and languages. But I did feel like I had experienced more love in my two years with Andy than most people do in several decades. My heart was totally full (and then some), and I genuinely felt blessed for it.
And Andy’s friends made sure I continued to feel the love that Andy had for me even after he was gone. Before his illness, I hadn’t been incredibly close with Andy’s friends, but through it all, we made lifelong bonds. They had personified amazing grace, demonstrating the goodness of their hearts in the ways they encircled Andy with support.
The months following his death continued to be a roller coaster of emotions as I made my way through the different stages of grief. Disbelief and, later, depression, followed by anger: a quiet but significant anger.
I’m not an angry person by nature. Petty anger, the kind we feel when we are slighted by a friend or feel underappreciated, seems like a waste of time and energy to me. But petty anger isn’t the only form that exists. There’s also righteous anger, the kind of anger that, when checked with hope and mixed with a cause, can help change the world.
I find it very hard to be angry unless blame is clear. But where was the blame here? I couldn’t be mad at Andy’s cancer because it was a collection of cells. I couldn’t be mad at the bad luck of terminal cancer because no one caused the cancer to happen.
No, I was mad at society. Andy had the courage to come out to a hateful world at a relatively young age. He was supposed to live three-quarters of his life as his authentic self. Instead, because cancer cut his life short, he had less than a quarter. Some people have even less time than that.
Even with a supportive, progressive family, hate had kept Andy inside himself for what turned out to be the majority of his life. None of us know how long we have, but we do have a ch
oice in whether we love or hate. And every day that we rob people of the ability to live their lives to the fullest, we are undermining the most precious gift we are given as humans.
As I said to that state representative in Delaware who had admonished us for moving the trans equality bill too quickly, each time we ask anyone—whether they are transgender, Black, an immigrant, Muslim, Native American, gay, or a woman—to sit by and let an extended conversation take place about whether they deserve to be respected and affirmed in who they are, we are asking people to watch their one life pass by without dignity or fairness. That is too much to ask of anyone.
I was furious at society for taking that time and truth away from Andy. I was angry that people were dying after being denied the right to pursue happiness and wholeness in whatever life they lived.
And in that anger, a deeper fire was lit and a lesson was learned. Every day matters in this fight. Dr. King called it “the fierce urgency of now.” Hope can be limitless. Inspiration can always be found. Ideas are endless. But time, that is one resource none of us can afford to waste.
And so I jumped back into our work. My weeks were filled with my work at CAP, and increasingly, my weekends were filled with travel, speaking at events across the country with the Human Rights Campaign. I felt closer to Andy continuing the work that we were both so passionate about. And at the center of that work was the fight for nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people in every corner of this country.
Before his death, Andy and I had convinced our colleagues at the Center for American Progress to embrace the idea of a comprehensive LGBTQ civil rights bill, a nationwide law that would not just prohibit discrimination in employment like ENDA, but also in housing, public spaces, schools, health care, stores, shops, restaurants, and shelters.
The same conversations that Andy and I, and later our colleagues at CAP, were having about thinking bigger and bolder in our federal advocacy were simultaneously happening across town at HRC. And to our surprise, as we worked on our report at CAP, in mid-July, just two weeks before Andy was rediagnosed with cancer, HRC came out publicly in favor of a comprehensive nondiscrimination bill in an op-ed by the organization’s president, Chad Griffin.
“At the end of the day, full federal equality is the only acceptable option,” he wrote in the piece. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
I had gotten to know Chad through my travels with HRC. Before moving to D.C. to lead the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization, he had helped lead the successful effort to overturn California’s Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
Since Chad’s move to HRC in 2012, I had been impressed with his charisma and compassion. But what struck me above all else was his desire to stand up for the most marginalized in the LGBTQ community in his role as HRC’s president—one of the most prominent positions in the equality movement—and his clear desire for a bold agenda. His op-ed endorsing a comprehensive LGBTQ civil rights bill demonstrated that, coinciding perfectly with the work that my colleagues and I were doing at CAP.
After Andy’s passing, I rededicated myself to the issue with a renewed passion and sense of urgency. With many of the same friends and colleagues who had helped us through the last month of Andy’s life, including Bishop Gene, we produced a ninety-four-page report called “We the People: Why Congress and U.S. States Must Pass Comprehensive LGBT Nondiscrimination Protections.”
“Throughout the 230-year history of the United States, the nation has slowly but steadily expanded access to every vital facet of daily life—from housing to employment to the public marketplace—for communities of Americans who were once excluded,” it opened. “Through exhaustive efforts, each generation has broadened the nation’s perception of ‘we the people.’ But despite this progress, too many Americans are still left behind, excluded from the country’s most basic legal protections.”
The report recounted many of the sobering statistics and stories I had become all too familiar with during our fight for gender identity protections in Delaware and in the year and a half since. One in four transgender people reported being fired from their job simply because of their gender identity. A quarter of same-sex couples experienced housing discrimination in one survey. More than half of LGBTQ students reported feeling unsafe in schools because of their sexual orientation, and roughly one-third feel unsafe because of their gender according to the student advocacy group GLSEN.
We released the report in December 2014, four months after Andy’s death, at a public event at CAP. The moment marked a clear shift in the broader national progressive movement’s approach to LGBTQ equality. No longer would we shrink into incrementalism. No longer would we ask for a quarter of a loaf while our community needed a full loaf. As HRC’s Chad Griffin had written several months before, we needed full federal equality.
Being the report’s lead author, I joined Chad Griffin, out gay member of Congress Mark Takano, and civil rights leader and Maryland pastor Delman Coates on a panel discussing the report and the need for a new federal LGBTQ civil rights act. The conversation was moderated by Maya Harris, who would later serve as the head of policy for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
But the highlight of the event was the announcement made by Senator Jeff Merkley, the progressive champion who had taken over as the prime sponsor of ENDA, that in the next Congress he would introduce a comprehensive LGBTQ civil rights bill. It was a historic declaration that forever changed the priorities and approach of the LGBTQ movement, and he did so while standing at a lectern and holding up our report, a document dedicated to Andy’s memory.
It was a bittersweet moment. Andy would have cherished it. And as the LGBTQ community continued to make significant steps and historic progress over the next two years, each time I couldn’t help but think, I wish Andy were here for this. Andy would have marveled at the pace of the change that was happening, a rate of progress that, while never fast enough, soon began to feel like an avalanche of advancements.
More and more states were adopting the policies in health care that Andy had championed in his life. Trans visibility, with role models like Laverne Cox and Janet Mock, increased beyond even the “transgender tipping point” of 2013. A brilliant and hilarious transgender woman, Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, made national headlines when she was appointed the first openly transgender White House staffer. Caitlyn Jenner’s coming out, as much as I disagree with her political beliefs, initiated conversations around trans identities in living rooms and around dinner tables across the country. And through it all, the percentage of Americans saying they personally know someone who is transgender rose from single digits to roughly a third.
The LGBTQ community writ large experienced almost unimaginable progress. Support for marriage equality continued to rise and initiated a domino effect within the courts. Almost weekly, marriage bans were falling in states across the country.
Eventually, on June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court issued their historic decision legalizing marriage equality throughout the country. The specifics of the case hit home for me. The Ohio plaintiff in the case, Jim Obergefell, had lost his husband, John, to ALS, the fatal disease that slowly eats away at the individual’s motor skills. Because Ohio still banned same-sex marriage, Jim and John, whose health was deteriorating, flew to Maryland, where same-sex marriage was legal, and married on the tarmac onboard a medically equipped plane.
When John passed away a short time later, Jim learned that, despite being legally married in Maryland, the Ohio government would keep his name off John’s death certificate, leaving the category of “surviving spouse” blank. Another indignity imposed on LGBTQ people that extended beyond life and into death.
But in a vote of five to four, the nation’s highest court ruled against this injustice in favor of nationwide marriage equality.
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideal
s of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
The atmosphere outside of the Supreme Court and around D.C. was euphoric following the decision. Soon, news spread that in the ultimate celebration of pride in this historic moment, President Obama would light up the White House in rainbow colors. And as the sun set, I joined friends in Lafayette Park, the square just in front of the White House, to watch the colors of the rainbow envelop the front of the home of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, and now Barack Obama.
Standing amid a sea of same-sex couples celebrating and LGBTQ people waving rainbow flags, my mind went back to the previous August on our rooftop. I put my hand on my wedding ring, which I continued to wear after Andy’s passing. I lifted my hand up to my mouth and kissed my ring. I wish Andy were here for this, I thought again.
“I love you, Bean,” I whispered.
While Andy and I were not a same-sex couple and, therefore, were always eligible to marry, our relationship underscored for me the importance of marriage equality. The roughly 1,500 rights and benefits associated with marriage go far beyond taxes and include things such as leave and medical decision-making. For lower-income and working-class same-sex couples, without the legal recognition of marriage, the type of illness Andy faced could easily result in having to choose between being fired from your job and serving as a caregiver.
Tomorrow Will Be Different Page 24