Everyone has his/her beliefs about what death is and what will happen afterwards. Thats perfectly fine and each one of us is bound to find out about it sooner or later anyway.

I still think that we, as what we call "civilized society", have sortof banned death from our lives. You don't talk to little kids about death. You don't talk about death when taking a walk with your girlfriend. Most of us seem to have to look death in the very eye to start spending some thought on it.
I think realizing that death is there and will eventually take all of us away from this very plane of existance and realy spending some deeper thought on it is a vital part of learning to appreciate the gift of life. Too many of us take being here and taking what they have for granted. It is not.
It can be over in the blink of an eye.
Helping our kids develop some kind of deeper thought about themselves and the world they are living in .. thats, i think, where we fail.