Kayleigh Cluff
Age 20 (born 17 Aug 2005)13 Jun 2026
Nashville, Tennessee (USA)
Suicide
Kayleigh died by suicide. It appears that her birth family did not affirm her trans identity.
My son just told me of a friend of his friend who has died by suicide on the 13th June, the obituary is linked below, it uses her deadname and wrong pronouns. S[he] was known as Kayleigh, with she/her pronouns.
The obituary published by Kayleigh's birth family makes no mention of her chosen name, gender or trans identity, but an adjusted extract is quoted below:
[Kayleigh] came into the world fighting. [She] struggled to breathe at birth, going five minutes without a breath and spending about a week in the NICU a hard beginning that shaped the rest of [her] life.
[She] grew into a particular child, one with some of the longest eyelashes and the widest grin you ever saw. As a small child, [she] could light up a room just by walking into it though [she] wanted no part of finger paint, and no one had better touch [her] hands, [her] lips, or [her] nose. [Her] teachers at Mother's Day Out adored [her], and so did [her] teachers at school, even as school itself tested [her]. [She] was great at fractions and hopeless at addition and subtraction, but [she] came alive in history. [She] became an avid reader, lost in the Warriors series, and [she] was a Brony through and through, with My Little Pony never far from the screen. When [she] finally walked down that graduation aisle, grinning ear to ear, the struggle was behind [her] and a hard-won goal was [hers].
From there, [her] confidence only grew. When a family friend opened a horseback riding school, [Kayleigh] and [her] brother Nolan started lessons and it became a turning point. Learning to handle and ride those horses built [her] up in the very places [she'd] always struggled, and [she] began to see that [she] could do hard things on [her] own. That same growth carried into [her] stepmother and father's restaurant, where working with people brought out a confidence no one expected. [She] could juggle customers and phone calls at the same time, a skill that stumped plenty of people, [her] own father included.
Then came the motors. [Kayleigh] ordered a model V8 engine and built it [herself]. The little [girl] who once watched Cars over and over had grown into a young [woman] who loved toy cars, then real ones and at eighteen, with [her] license in hand, that love became a love of driving. Near the end of [her] life, [she] was dreaming of the road ahead: becoming a truck driver, or a mechanic.
[Kayleigh] was a victor, and every struggle [she] turned into a victory.
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/inman-cluff-obituary?id=61732462
