The end

The nature of death has always been a subject of debate. One might compare it to sleep, another poorly understood phenomenon. On the one hand people die all the time, so it should be well-understood. On the other hand controlling the process of death (or indeed that of sleep) is extremely difficult. Hence the lack of understanding.

Even defining death is a difficult task. The subjective experience of death is by definition not possible to retrieve. The closest we get is near-death experiences, which are pretty much indistinguishable from comas or sleeping.

Another problem is discussing death; death anxiety means that discussions or even contemplation of the subject will quickly lead to dropping the subject. Although perhaps this is because there just isn't much to say.