Hmm, my interpretation on Death??

(Had really good thoughts in the car, and then lost it when I got to the computer)
I am currently reading Stephen Kings, "Pet Sematary." I'm not very far into it, I'm only on chapter 15. However, one thing that the main character, Louis, deals with is death. When his young daughter Ellie goes up the hill and see's the "Pet Sematary" and she begins to feel very sad, and is crying over the fact that she doesn't want her cat, Church to die, or any one. She is simply grieving for the fact that death is a factor of life. But at first she asks about how long cats die, and what not. He tells her that it will be a very long time till Church dies, but Ellie (who is only five) says it doesn't feel like a very long time at all. Here is an excerpt from the book.

"'Honey," he said, "if it was up to me, I'd let Church live to be a hundred. But I don't make the rules."
"Who does?" she asked, and then with infinite scorn:"God, I suppose."
Louis stifled the urge to laugh. It was too serious. "God or Somebody," he said. "Clocks run down-that's all I know. There are no guarentees babe."
"I don't want Church to be like all those dead pets!" she burst out suddenly tearful and furious. "I don't want Church to ever be dead! He's my cat! He's not God's cat! Let God have his own cat! Let God have all the da** old cats he wants, and kill them all! Church is mine!"

It feels to me like we tend to take death for granted, and it takes something special to make it finally hit us as to what it is, what it encompasses. We also don't seem to really know how much someone (or something) means to us, until it dies. Later in the book, Louis deals with a college student who was hit by a car, and ended up dying in his arms. How do we deal with death? What will it take to make us realize what it is, and how it affects us? Death is one thing that mystifies us all. Some say we can never truly know what will happen after death until we die ourselves. I my self am know completly sure as to what will happen when I die. Do you?