“I think that our denial of death is almost comparable to the denial of sexuality under the Victorians. And I think that maintaining that level of denial, in and of itself, distorts the capacity to understand the world, to think straight.”

These words come from Mary Catherine Bateson, who engaged in a public dialogue with me last week. A cultural anthropologist of note, she dares to talk openly about subjects that American society likes to keep hidden in the closet.

Asked her feelings about the prospect of her own death, Catherine Bateson replies forthrightly. In the face of this event she feels peaceful but she adds one caveat: “I feel concerned that, if I were very ill, I might not have the clarity of my own convictions about being willing to die.”

It’s important to leave models for the next generation. Just as we have received stories of our forebears’ death  –  – “That’s how granddad was, he said he was ready to die and he was” –  – so we can provide our descendants with our stories. Ms. Bateson believes that of all the things we learn in the course of a lifetime, dealing with mortality may be the most important.

Her mother, Margaret Mead, was one of the first people to write a living will. In it, she stipulated that she did not want anything done to extend her life if she had suffered any mental impairment or lost her mobility. This statement made Catherine, then a teenager, angry because her mother “was saying that it was not worth her while to be alive when she was no longer the famous Margaret Mead.” Catherine’s sharp response was: “But you’d still be my mother.”

Ms. Bateson believes in not being surprised when serious disabilities come along. She sees them as precursors to death and reason for doing what you can to cope. When reading in their memoirs how other people adapt to aging, she has formulated two rules of thumb.

The first is “to keep on learning, observing and thinking about what’s happened.”

The second concerns the need to change self-definition, “not to be caught in a self-definition that says, if I’m not what I was at age 50, then I’m nothing.” Even if her mother had been unable to do scholarship any more, she would have remained an important person – her mother.

On the subject of care for the sick, Bateson is eloquent insisting that being attended goes far beyond high technology and lots of tubes. She sees it as giving care in a personal way, such as sitting by a person’s bed and holding her hand.

“Caring for someone you love, whether it’s an infant or a sick person does have built-in rewards, even though it’s a huge burden.” Bateson considers it a “profound experience that, over a period of time, a great many people have missed out on, the privilege of giving care to a human being you love.”

Professor Bateson has lived and worked in several other countries, experience that has brought her important cross-cultural insights. Drawing on her observations of Iranian society, she poses the question of why women there are not more rebellious about their status.

Contrasting American and Iranian women, she identifies the most important man in the life of women who live in that patriarchal society. He is not her father, nor her husband, but rather her son. “When she has an adult son, she is courted, she’s listened to, she’s treated with veneration.”

One of the things we fail to understand about patriarchy, Professor Bateson says, is how “it’s not just about male versus female, but it’s about elder versus younger.” The women she really feels sorry for are those whose sons marry emancipated women.

In American society with its negative view of advancing age, people cannot look forward to anything good. That makes them feel rebellious because the future does not promise enough rewards.

Catherine Bateson loves being a grandmother, a fairly new and thoroughly welcome role for her. With increased longevity, she points out, the generations are no longer in synch the way they used to be because so many of us now have great-grandchildren and have become part of four-generation families.

Professor Bateson thinks all of us adults need children in our lives. To make that possible we have to build bridges to them. One way of doing that is to be open to them teaching us.

She is fond of asking students what they have taught their parents. One girl told her, “I taught my dad not to interrupt me,” an experience that conveyed to him her sense of personhood.

“There are areas where public understanding has changed in our lifetime and our children are often more sensitive to issues than we are and can usefully teach us,” Ms. Bateson adds.

Many more of Professor Bateson’s insights can be found in her books, notably the paperback “Full Circles, Overlapping Lives,” published in 2000.   

Richard Griffin