"Anyone care to wax philosophical on this?"
People are terrified of death because it is absolute, irreversable, and final. It is the end of all sensation and there is no coming back. It is not possible to put a positive spin on death. Life is a gradual fade-in of awareness followed by parties and laughter and then decay and a sudden drop at the end. You can see it coming from a mile off, and it is always there.
Epicurus, who is himself dead, once said that no-one should worry about death because the dead do not know they are dead, and the living are not dead. He said that you should imagine death as you think of the period before you were born. He did not account for people who are aware of their impending death. I have come to the conclusion that it is better to lose your marbles and die senile and oblivious, than to die whilst compos mentis. I envy the people who lived in the past and believed in heaven; they were wrong, but they died happy.
Death comes to everyone and there is no escape or return. People are unwilling to accept that they will die and be forgotten. If you have great-great-grandchildren it is a fair bet that they will not be able to name you or picture you in their minds. If your own descendents aren't going to remember you, it's a sure bet that no-one else will. Anything you write down or achieve in life will be erased, as will your family and all you hold dear. You will be unable to prevent that happening. Even if you could live for hundreds of years, you would still die eventually. If you could live forever, the days of wine and roses would whizz by, and you would spend the vast majority of your life floating in the vacuum of space, long after the stars and planets and black holes have burned away.
"we love life, and we hate Death"
Some people adore death when it happens to other people, and hate it when their own worst enemy lives to a ripe old age. I like to confront death by imagining the death of other people. Perhaps that is what drives serial killers. A desire to confront death, and master it.
