From dust to alleluia, for Kia

To celebrate the life of Kia Ife Grant, and to mourn her death,  the Cathedral community gathered this morning with her family and friends in the Great Choir. It was a hard thing. Kia was only 30. In her two years at the Cathedral as the Arts and Events Coordinator, she had affected many with her positive and joyous spirit. Kia died on Tuesday of Holy Week, suddenly, unexpectedly. Throughout the passage from Maundy Thursday through Good Friday to the Great Vigil and Easter Sunday, we were all conscious of this loss of a co-worker, a great spirit, an artist, a friend. If you're paying attention - and Kia made me pay more attention - Easter is not pretty. It is ferocious.

Funerals, I think, are for the living. We say words we always meant to say but put off to another time that has now escaped from us. We sing songs of consolation. We kneel and rise, pray, cry out loud, sit in silence. We reaffirm our faith when we most desperately need to be reminded of it. When a Kia Grant enters and then leaves your life, it is first impossible to measure the gift of presence, and then impossible to take the measure of the loss. Kia lived intensely; I did not realize how non-stop alive she wasuntil, during the funeral service, people spoke of her manyaccomplishments. Their words, in describing her, seemed to be a gauntlet thrown down to us all: Wake up. Live now! And do the work you are born to do.

The prayer book bids us rejoice with ferocity: "All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."

Yes. Even at the grave, we must make our song.