death taboo

In our society death is a topic that many people are afraid of talking about. It is almost as if it is a taboo to talk about it. You walk into a room and it could be a very pleasant mood, and one mention of the word death and the mood could instantly drop.  The question is why are we afraid of it? Death is a natural event that everyone must go through, so what makes it so hard to talk about? One thing that makes people fear death is that we are a materialistic culture, and when we die we lose everything we have. We can infer that some reasons we are afraid of death is because we lose all those objects that we put so much value into it. Another reason that could possibly tie into our fear of death is that it is the most unknown thing we know of. There are no answers to it, and it works in mysterious ways. We constantly seek answers to everything, so our materialism is one way we express our knowledge. The more you have the more knowledge you could possibly have. How could we have something that gives us insight to death? We are afraid of death because we are afraid of the unknown, because we need material items to validate us, and help explain the meanings to ideas. I remember a time when I was at a funeral for one of my relatives. Even though death was standing in front of everyone no one said anything about it. As the naive child I mentioned the taboo, and instantly my parents told me to be quiet. At the time I didn't understand. What was the big deal? He had already passed on and the word still had its affect on everyone there.