You think about dying. The body has a small reaction. Not a death-of-body reaction — you're alive, the body is fine. A reaction to the idea. The image of the end. The notion that there will be a day when there isn't anymore. That day is the source of the dread.
K asked what people are afraid of when they're afraid of death. The body? Bodies have been ending for billions of years. The species seems okay with it on the species level. The pain? Most deaths aren't painful. The afterlife? People who don't believe in one are still afraid. So what?
K's answer: the autobiography. The continuous person you've been building since you could speak. That person is what ends. That ending is what's feared.
The fear of death is the fragment's fear of its own dissolution. The fragment has spent decades constructing itself, defending itself, accumulating experiences as proof of itself. Death is the announcement that all of that goes. Not the body — the me. The story. The protagonist. The fragment, finally and irreversibly, undone. The fear is appropriate, in a way. The fragment is right to fear death. Death is what the fragment can't survive.
Sit with the thought of your death long enough and the texture shifts. The first wave is dread. The second wave is something else. A loosening. A sense of all of this will be put down. Not as comfort. As fact. Some people find this terrifying. Some find it freeing. The difference is how attached they were to the autobiography in the first place.
You aren't afraid of dying. You're afraid of the autobiography ending. The body will be fine. The body has been ending forever. What ends with the body is the fragment that's been calling the shots. That's what's feared. That's what dies.