Death is nothing to us. For a while.

Children do not fear death.

They know nothing about it.

They fear pain and sometimes anger, perhaps in the guise of a neighbor's dog.

But not death, the idea of which never so much as occurs to them until they see it in a dead animal or person, a pet or perhaps a relative.

But then, as soon as they get it, they are afraid. 

Though it still doesn't really prey upon them until they realize it inescapably will happen also to them.

That's sometime in adolescence, usually.

And then they acquire fear of death as a permanent feature of their human condition that barely lapses even for the most desperately suicidal.

Or so it seems.