I too have lost people. Pretty much anyone my age will have unless they are tragically sheltered. I sometimes have said that a person isn't truly an adult until they've attended a good friend's funeral.
I'm not saying death is a good time, just that some people have this conception of it like it is the greatest evil mankind faces or something.
My sister is a hospice nurse so she talks to dying people all the time. She says some people cling desperately to life through horrible agony while others are almost impatient for it to happen despite not being in any significant discomfort. So I'd agree that there's a spectrum of being able to deal and I think I will live my life better if I try to be on the "can deal" end of that.