I've witnessed and been around death pretty frequently especially as a kid. I remember vividly waking up in a musty, yellow hotel room in New Jersey with my mother, grandmother, and aunt to the phone call from the hospital that my grandfather had passed in the night after being taken off of life support. He had suffered a surprise and severe stroke at only the age of 63, leaving my grandmother a widow and something their four adult children could finally talk about. I was the tender age of six years old when I looked death straight in the face in the form of my cold grandfather on a hospital bed. I processed it as well as any six-year-old could, but I mostly recall the energy and feelings of the adults involved, and how my grandmother was never the same. Until her death day, which was twenty years after her husband's, she refused to date or even consider another man.
About two years, almost to the day, later, my childhood best friend finally lost her battle with Leukemia. She was only just ten years old, and had been fighting a losing battle for over three years at that point. I was eight at the time.
I'll never forget the day my parents told me my best friend had passed. It was a relatively mild August afternoon in rural Ohio, where my mom and dad decided to surprise my little brother and me with a trip to the county fair. As a young child with very little means, this was like winning a trip to Disney World. I remember that my parents let me eat cotton candy and elephant ears until I was sick, and I rode every ride I could, sometimes twice. When we finally came home, my parents sat on the back patio in our rusted metal chairs, my father with a cold Molson's beer, and my mother with a glass of unsweetened homemade iced tea. I looked over my new treasures and reminisced on my wonderful, perfect day in my bedroom, before my mother called me from outside to sit with them on the patio. I embraced my parents both, and said, "thank you mommy and daddy, this was the best day ever! I love you."
Which is when my parents decided it would be a good time to break the news to me about my friend's passing. To be honest, I'm still not sure if I fully processed it, I remember grieving briefly, but ultimately trying to get on with my eight-year-old life. Somewhere in that time, I adopted the, "everyone dies, who cares?" mentality, along with my own increased interest in death and the macabre (one of my nicknames was Wednesday Addams. One part the hair, one part my morbid sense).
Death changes the psyche, as well all know. Studies have shown that children don't fully grasp the concept of death until around the ages of five or six, and even then it's more of a, "they leave and don't come back ever. But it's only old people, animals, and not people you personally know." kind of understanding. As one would probably expect from a small person who's soft spot on their head hasn't finished closing in yet.
Even though I don't totally love my experiences with death as a very young person, or my bizarre interest in it following two untimely deaths, I am thankful for the perspective it has given me. I don't fully know or believe what comes after life, but I am thankful for each day (even when I am annoyed at said day for various reasons).
I know JK Rowling is cancelled now, and she did the one thing Voldemort couldn't do, which is destroy Harry Potter. BUT I will hold Harry Potter near and dear to my heart for as long as I live (without supporting JKR or giving her more of my money because fuck that bitch).
What I'm getting at is my favorite creatures from Harry Potter are the Thestrals, whom Harry and friends meet in book five. You can only see Thestrals if you've seen death, which is why Harry and Luna Lovegood are the only two who can seem them out of the bunch. The Thestrals are used to take the gang to a safe location quickly in their featured chapter, appearing as just invisible flying beings to the other children, while presenting as haunting, beautiful, majestic creatures to those who have been unlucky in witnessing death.
I'd like to think of Thestrals as a form of empathy and perspective in the Muggle world. Death is one of the living's greatest fears and obstacles, but to the dead it is just a part of their journey. I am thankful for the empathy and kindness and perspective I have, and can share with others. Not everyone is as lucky, I suppose. 
