Torrence Kayden Gay Obituary: Remembering the Life of Torri Gay

Fifteen years old, and already gone: Torrence Kayden “Torri” Gay died on October 28, 2026, in Billings, Montana, leaving behind the family, friends, and foster family who knew her as an artist, a dancer, and the kid who could turn a hard day into laughter. Schnider Funeral Home and legacy.com carried the family’s obituary, which says Torri was born February 23, 2011, in Santa Cruz, California, to Tiffany Bartlett and Cory Gay.

The loss lands across two Montana communities at once: she died in Billings, and echovita.com reports that a memorial service is scheduled for Friday, November 6, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. at the Hillcrest Lawn Memorial Chapel, 1410 13th St S, Great Falls, MT 59405. For a family spread across parents, stepparents, foster parents, sisters, stepsisters, and brothers, that service is the first fixed point in a week that has otherwise been measured in memories.

A life that made ordinary rooms feel bigger

Torri’s obituary reads less like a list of accomplishments than a description of a presence. She was goofy, full of life, and “unapologetically her own person,” with a style built around dark colors and an occasional splash of light. Creativity ran through everything she did: give her a pen and paper, the family wrote, and she could draw just about anything you could imagine.

Torrence Kayden Gay Obituary: Remembering the Life of Torri Gay — Photo: schniderfuneralhome.com

She loved animals and nature, music, makeup, and the small rituals of self-expression. She was athletic and incredibly fast, and the most treasured memories, the obituary says, were dance parties with her mom and sisters, music blaring from the television while they laughed and made memories now held close. Those details matter because they are the ones people will repeat at the chapel: not a résumé, but evidence of how she moved through a room.

Surrounded by a wide, chosen family

The survivors named across the reports show how many households Torri touched. She leaves behind her mother, Tiffany; sisters Aurora, Loralai, and Remington; stepfather Scott; stepsisters Olivia, Jazmynn, and Cailynn; and stepbrother Cameron. She also leaves behind foster parents Amber and Jose; foster brothers Jr, AJ, and Dom; father Cory and his fiancé Kylie; and sisters Everly and Emery, along with extended family and friends.

To the world she was Torrence Gay; to so many she was Torri; to her mother, the obituary says, she remains the firstborn baby girl, “TorTor,” and her little dinosaur. That layering of names is the story’s quiet center: a teenager who belonged to more than one family and still managed to make each one feel like hers.

What happens next, and what remains

The practical next step is the November 6 memorial in Great Falls, where family and friends can gather, send flowers, light a candle, or leave a message in the online guestbook that echovita.com lists for Torrence Kayden Gay. Beyond that, there is only the longer work of keeping the specific things alive: her laughter, her silliness, her warmth, her dancing, and the habit she had of thinking of others before herself.

Fifteen years was not nearly enough time, the family wrote, but those 15 years will forever be treasured. In a week when Billings and Great Falls will see one more empty chair at a family table, the obituary’s plain claim is the durable one: the love she gave and the lives she touched will continue through everyone who knew her.