Certainly at death is an ideal time to be close to God. People have believed in God for 6000 years and all but two or three have died. But God's plan for His children never contemplated death as a key part of the experience. He is the God of the living, not the dead. It is when we somehow come to a place where we are settled in for the long-haul that we lose our sense of expectancy and become strangely content.
Religion becomes but one aspect of the compartmentalized life.
We begin to think about pensions and retirement. Those still excited by the glory of living faith are scoffed at. Thankfully this malady is not universal. I have the pleasure from time to time of meeting and interacting with mature-aged Adventist stalwarts who've been around awhile but who still believe. In spite of the astonishing shroud of revisionism steadily spewed into the faith by some among us, there are those who in their golden years have read from the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy, and while laughed at, pitied, and just-barely put up with by some among a newer generation of pastors, refuse to bow to the new views.