death and taxes

I'm sitting here thinking about one of the sure things in life...no it's not taxes, it's the other sure thing..death. Not about my own death, but about the death of a couple of others. This morning as I was sitting at a red light on my way to school, I received a text message telling me that an aunt had died last night. It was quite a shock to hear of her death. Although it was sad news there are so many happy memories of her. She kept up a tradition all her adult life that was taught to her by my grand-mother, and I'm sure by my great-grandmother as well. It was a tradition of hospitality...something that's not practiced by a lot of people back home nowadays. A person could always be sure that he/she would be fed well when they went to visit Auntie Ellie. As soon as you walked in the door she would offer you either tea or coffee and sit you at the table and feed you something. Come to think of it all my aunties and a couple of my uncles on my dad's side have carried on this tradition. Sadly on my mom's side there are only 2 aunties and 1 uncle that are like this. My auntie Ellie was always laughing about something and had many funny stories to tell. Some were traditional Native teachings that had a point, others were just funny stories to make you laugh. Funny thing about aunt Ellie...I think if she had a choice on what day to die...it probably would've been on halloween.