Understanding death as a natural biological process comes only with age. Children are not able to perceive death as a complete stop of all processes in the body. Nevertheless, with age, a person realizes the finiteness of all living things and stops thinking about death as something impossible. However, each person has their own understanding and attitude towards death. The perception of death in children and adults differs drastically due to age. “Learning about death occurs when children are exposed to biological facts about its inevitability, its irreversibility, and the cessation of physical and psychological processes” (Panagiotaki et al., 2018, p. 99). Adults, with their experience and development, understand the concept of certifying all living things.
As for me, I regard death as an irreversible process. As a teenager, I believed that death is something distant and it would not touch me. Nevertheless, I clearly understood what death is and how it happens. First, many adolescents at this age are faced with the death of the older generation in the family for the first time. That is why I thought that death did not concern me because I was young. Second, as a teenager, my understanding of such an important concept was just forming.
However, now my perception of death has completely changed. I understand that death does not depend on age or anything else. I relate to this fact with the acceptance that human life is fragile and can be interrupted at one moment. I am not afraid of death itself but of dying of a prolonged illness in agony. After all, to be scared of death means not understanding natural processes in nature.
Thus, by my own example, I can say that with age, the perception of death changes and the fact of the death of all living things becomes more obvious.
Reference
Panagiotaki, G., Hopkins, M., Nobes, G., Ward, E., & Griffiths, D. (2018). Children’s and adults’ understanding of death: Cognitive, parental, and experiential influences. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 166, 96–115.