Deadnaming, misgendering and more: A trans and nonbinary community grapples with end-of-life complexities

CHICAGO — When COVID-19 first hit Chicago in 2020, essential worker Elias Renaud texted his sister and a good friend from the bus on his way home from his job at a grocery store.

“If something happens to me, this is where I want things to go, this is what I want done,” Renaud, who uses the pronouns he/him, remembers telling them.

The 44-year-old transgender man, from Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood, drew up a living will with the cautious hope that when he dies, his body would be treated with dignity.

“I think by the time I die, there will be a lot of people doing death work that will have had experience with trans bodies or will be trans people themselves, or nonbinary people themselves,” he said.

For trans people like Renaud, as well as for nonbinary people, life comes with its own set of difficulties. But so does death.

As the death care industry grapples with changing cultural attitudes and questions on how to respectfully lay to rest those who identify as trans or nonbinary, a South Side-based LGBTQ