I taught an independent study some years ago with a graduate student named Elizabeth Brown. Our one subject was Edward T. Hall's belief that cultures exist to hide truths people can't handle. Our conversations darted from death to drugs, tattoos to greed.

But our talks always rambled back to death.

Certainly I was raised with the idea that death was dirty and unnatural. My Aunt Mary Lou died young of cancer, and my Uncle Gerald kissed her goodbye as she lay in her coffin.

My mother was grossed out; that was all she could talk about afterward. This is the same mother who required me to take a shower after we visited a funeral home, despite science never proving that corpses emit Death Germs.

Two months before I was born, my father's father put a shotgun in his mouth at a family reunion, and my father never talks about him, never. This makes no sense and only contributes to the taboo surrounding suicide.

Attitudes regarding death in the United States have radically changed in the last century and a half. In the Victorian era, families picnicked in cemeteries, made wreaths with the hair of the deceased and took family portraits with the corpse.

It's a luxury for us to assume each generation should live longer than the one before. When infant and maternal mortality rates were higher, you had eight children, understanding that many if not most of them might not survive childhood. Then you were born at home with your family around you and died the same way. Now, when you die, you're in a hospital room, hooked up to machines and tended by strangers. Your remains are carted to the faux luxury of a funeral home and slathered in makeup.

We consider the funeral practices of the ancient Egyptians quaint and misguided, but the average U.S. funeral costs about $10,000, according to the AARP. All this to accomplish what the less affluent accomplish for free with a shovel.

I'm not saying I want to be turned into compost after I die, an option described in the Aug. 29 New Yorker. I don't know. I haven't thought about it, and I should. Anybody can die, anytime.

When my oldest son Jacob was 2, he fell onto a 12th-floor ledge.

He landed 2 feet from oblivion; had I not gotten to him in a 10th of a second, he would have climbed to his feet. Given how unsteady toddlers are, if he had, he certainly would have fallen to his death.

Until then, I'd always thought I would have two children like everybody else. But the realization of mortality prompted me to affirm life by giving birth to another. That one child turned out to be two, and I give purpose to Jacob's near-tragedy by thinking that without it, my twins would never have been born. This was God's way of putting them on this earth.

I feel better getting that out. It's 1 a.m., I've got to rise at 5, and I am not going to make nachos. I am not going ...

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer. Rebecca Bailey, the mother of four, lives in Schererville and teaches at Valparaiso University. Her column alternates with that of Lansing mom Carrie Steinweg. She can be reached at Rebecca.bailey@valpo.edu.