The first thing that one usually does when their aunt is found dead is to celebrate. Of course, this process varies across cultures, but the general rule is to throw your hands up and yell “Hooray!” upon receiving the news, or discovering it.

So when little Tommy came home from soccer practice to find his aunt dead on the lazy chair in the living room, he did throw his hands up and yell “Hooray!” (Children are very well read nowadays and know all about these traditions.) He didn’t yell too loud, though, as he wasn’t totally sure she had expired. Tommy took as evidence her stillness, her glazed-over eyes and a little drool which had come out of her mouth, which weren’t the best indicators given that she had been reported with these same expressions during her dates. He did not try checking her pulse or feeling for her temperature--no one save foolhardy, mate-hungry males should attempt physical contact with an aunt.

An even more elaborate convention of dealing with dead aunts is how one should tell everyone else. To be sure, there is no procedure carved in stone, but it is commonly accepted that everyone should make as much pomp and fuss over the incidence as possible, using the throw-up-your-hands-and-yell-hooray rule. This fuss usually extends to the news on tv channels, where they display, along with the lottery results, the locations where aunts have died that day. It is forbidden to speak the name of an aunt, much more a dead aunt. Their cursed spirits are subject to such extreme loneliness that even their hearing their name spoken among the living could revive them.

Tommy told his mother, who had just come back from work. Tommy’s mother threw up her hands and yelled “Hooray!” Then Tommy’s mother rang up Tommy’s dad, who was working in Singapore. Tommy’s dad was heard throwing up his hands and yelling “Hooray!”

Tommy and his mother ran out on the streets and started dancing. Curious folk who passed by and asked were told of the aunt’s demise; a throwing up of hands and the yelling of “Hooray!” followed. Soon the entire length of the road was filled with people dancing and throwing up their hands and yelling “Hooray!” The happiness was almost a plague unto itself. All outside news, tragedies, arguments, obligations, weddings and newly bought puppies were forgotten for this miraculous moment that confirmed, briefly, the existence of a benevolent god.

After the day of dancing had concluded, Tommy’s family had arranged for a party. Tommy’s dad was so esctatic with the news he immediately took aunt-leave and came home (the company he worked for made an allowance of five days for aunt-related business). Caterers willingly offered to cater for the event for free. No invitations had to be sent out; everyone was free to come. Even VIPs came of their own accord to sit in a corner and look important. When the time came they made important-sounding but hollow speeches about the malignancy of aunts and the important of celebrating their deaths--all very true but overly repeated information that nonetheless people clapped vigorously to. Tommy’s aunt was described as the devil’s second-in-command, the queen of succubi, the combination of Scylla and Charybdis, a relative of the serpent that had charmed Eve, and many other acid-laced comments too pungent to make the print.

During these parties, the family often takes stock of aunt’s victims during the course of her life. Like all other aunts, her chosen prey had fallen into incredibly bad luck. The common examples cited were: one had lost his arm in a car accident, another had all his siblings perish in a plane crash, and a third had lost his high-paying job and became homeless. People also discussed the upcoming deaths of other aunts, and among the cohort than did were more than a few sly individuals who enjoyed jumping from party to party and living off the free food and drink provided. This is not an impossible feat, for the world is crammed with aunts and at least one of them is bound to die every day.

Finally there was the issue of the burial. Aunt’s bodies, like those of saints, do not undergo decay. The old practice of disposing the bodies of aunts was to send them to a processing factory to be made into pet food, but the times have changed a lot and after numerous campaigns by animal protection groups the government finally made it illegal for the corpses of aunts to be used in manufacture of pet food, human food, or any sort of food. In fact, the legislation passed was so broad in terminology that it forbade any sort of burial of aunts. This broken logic confused everyone, such that little Timmy’s family was forced to allocate a small space next to the compost bin as the final resting place of the vile object. People at the party were invited to spit on the fresh mound of soil marking the area.

And always, to end the celebrating of aunt’s deaths: everyone threw up their hands and yelled “Hooray!”