What you are saying is kind of funny, you "respect the process", the process needs not to be respected just accepted. The process is not the result of a deliberate thought process it just is. Do you respect the moon or the clouds in the sky?

I don't fear death but it is not a friend of mine.

I recently lost a dear friend unexpectedly. She was my mother's best friend but I treasured her too. One day she said she would love to see her daughter. I knew life was short so I arranged a mother daughter outing. The next week I got a call that she had a stroke and died. She had a beautiful family that gave her a religious funeral. I went out of respect for her and them. I planned to sit quietly and smile politely. I don't remember what they sang or said or did. It's not part of my memory. I remember I saw her picture and I ugly cried for an hour. I cried because the world is less beautiful without her but now each time I remember her I am extremely grateful that I got to be one of that lucky group of people who knew her. She taught me to appreciate life while we have it. I think I'll leave my final details to anyone who cares enough to file away my remains. My only suggestion is Kleenex.

For myself birth and death are not irrelevant, even more so when it is someone I love, someone close to me. Whatever my mind set I'm pretty sure I will be a while sad at their passing. If nothing else can assuage some of the fear of death I would take comfort in the below advice from physicist Aaron Freeman.

"You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed.

You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you.

And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly."

I have a strange relationship with death, when faced with extreme situations I tend to think;I can’t complain, I’ve had a great life compared to most.
But given any control, I know that I would fight to live, I think most animals would, unless they feel hopeless.
Sometimes I think that if dementia comes I will go to a place where I can get an assisted death, having seen 2 relatives go that way in nursing care, (and knowing those places generate funds for shareholders While paying staff minimum wage and the budgets for food etc!).
Yes, a beautiful song. At my ‘life party’ I’d quite like this one, for a sad moment:

I participated in a jazz funeral in New Orleans a few years ago. That's what I'd like, a well-lubricated one.

When I die that will be the end of me. I feel sad for those I leave behind.

As a father, this song represents my greatest fear. I can't even begin to imagine what Eric Clapton felt when his four year old son died so tragically.

When my son was four months old he had a severe respiratory infection and spent a week in intensive care on a ventilator and then in an oxygen tent. When my daughter was fourteen she experienced still unexplained fainting spells along with an erratic heartbeat. That went on for weeks. During those occasions I was constantly in fear. I felt helpless and utterly lost. They were the only times in my life, I even considered praying.

Now I have a grandson and his sibling is due in September. I sincerely hope that I will not outlive either my children or grandchildren. I don't think I could handle that.

As an agnostic, I don't fear death OR look forward to it.
It's irrelevant.

That's a pretty good song, I definitely agree 100 percent what you are saying