If things go as they should, the deceased get an honorable, dignified burial. What Donald Young got was a party. I cannot overstate the case; Young's transitory services were no dirge. The service had the tone of any Sunday morning service at Trinity United Church of Christ: lustrous, joyful and brilliant, with unalloyed power oozing from the walls.

For those unfamiliar with Donald Young, his influence could be gauged not merely from remarks made by his eminent pastor, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, but by the sheer presence of family and Family---his fellow Trinitarians turned out in force, filling Trinity's huge edifice to the rafters and this writer believes the gay community, the church children of Chicago, made themselves known in grand style, in crisp, flawlessly ironed Sunday-go-to-meeting suits and swank furs. The majestic, animated Donald Young deserved no less.

Although he received no formal training, Young was a profound musician with an uncanny grasp of phrasing and choral texture. He knew when to stretch a piece and when to quit and his colleagues learned much from his dazzling showmanship and sovereign musical instincts; the young lady who did much of the conducting for the service bore the unmistakable stamp of Young's style. It would be a grievous mistake to think that Young was simply a gifted local musician; he received resolutions from the Gospel Music Workshop of America and Richard Smallwood and the musical portions of the service had a firm grasp on the tremendously high bar Young had set. The Trinity choir displayed its customary operatic fullness of tone and clarity of voices; Sydne Evans displayed a bright, flexible, rangy alto with a rich gospel rasp in the lower register in the song "Safe in His Arms" and Robert Collins's granitic, weighty baritone channeled Mahalia Jackson in the old spiritual "Soon I Will Be Done".

LaToya Young, Donald's niece, provided one of the morning's notes of pathos, quaveringly reading a letter to and about her uncle; her emotional nakedness provoked tears and praise. The centerpiece of the service was Dr. Jeremiah Wright's theologically agile exegesis on the death of David's son, Absalom. It was a lesson to any aspiring preacher, proving that there are more than three or four passages of Scripture suited to transitory services and one need not lean heavily on the oral canon of the African American preaching tradition to make timely, powerful points of consolation; Dr. Wright didn't merely stand at the pulpit and chant a variation on James Weldon Johnson's Go Down Death, Wright's sermon was rich spiritual meat for disconsolate souls. Donald Young's passing was a resonating, deep tragedy whose grief was transformed and transcended through the radiant transitorial services. We should all be so blessed to live such a life and to die such an honored Christian death.