You got me started on this journey, so I suppose it's fitting that yours be the first entry I am compelled to reply to (and I do me compelled: replies and comments on the web are something I am rarely motivated to participate in).

Our experiences, and more so, our reactions toward death are seemingly quite different. Instead of finding it hard to write about death, I find it soothing. Dealing with death over the years has been a disturbingly easy experience. Don't be confused, easy is not synonymous with nonchalant. I hold death in a place of reverence. Not a psychopathic obsession, mind you, consisting of some unrealistic and hypocritical worship of death. And neither is it an antiquated religious coping mechanism - an idea that "they are in a better place". It is just that, a reverence: an appreciation for the person that was, the life changing interactions they had, and the legacy that they left behind.

Sure, death holds mystery - we don't know what happens, or if anything happens when someone passes from the physical body. I tend to believe that is not the end. But, all I know - can see, touch, hear - is who that person was in life, and what they left behind for the rest of us, be it good, evil, or somewhere in that infinite grey in which we actually reside.

So yea, death is dark, but beautiful, much like the night sky in the middle of nowhere on a clear night. Never to be desired, forever misunderstood, and often mistakenly feared: death is unsettlingly magnificent; the true milestone of one's accomplishments.