Sometimes when contemplating one course of action or another I will get out my tarot deck and pull a card. The most recent time I did this, the Death card came up. The Death card tends to send a chill up the spine when it is pulled. This is an instinctive reaction which is understandable. Most tarot card readers will tell you, however, that the Death card rarely means the death of the person in question.
Death is, after all, just a change, a transition from one reality to another.
In that sense, all of change is, to some degree, a death. It is no wonder then that we tend to fear change. We don't know what is on the other side. We don't know how this or that move will affect us. We don't know how others will react to changes in our lives.