Social Death

I am a very lucky person, in that very few people I care about have passed away. Which I feel gives me the distance to approach the questions regarding why we talk about people passing away like we talk about people passing gas. In hushed tones, with a distinctly regretful timbre and in a manner that shows you are aknowledging the event yet still in a hurry to change the subject, even though you know nobody is really going to ignore it.
Or at least that tends to be my knee-jerk reaction approach to it.
I'm not sure why people are so sad about death. Or at least for such long periods of time. For me, the sadder thing has always been when people choose to leave others people. Not to say that death is not sad. But [barring instances of suicide] for the most part it seems whomever we mourn died of uncontrollable circumstances, and unless you believe they were horrible people going to hell or that this life on this planet is all there is, why are people so sad? I'm not heartless, I too, indulge myself in mourning when appropriate, and many times, when not. I'm not meaning to criticise, simply questioning.
I think I may be doing a bad job of explaining the position from which I aspire to inqure from, so i'm going to break here and see how Jessie decides to spin or abandon this.