Our culture and time is one of the worst in history in preparing people for the inevitability of death and dying and pain and suffering.  Consider the euphemisms with which we talk about death.  I remember as a young seminarian talking with a woman from our church who's young husband had died.  In my naive, well-intentioned, caring way I asked her, "When did you lose your husband?"  She looked at me and with a small amount of irritation and quickly replied, "I didn't lose him.  He died and I know where he is."  This was my early and rude introduction to a world that my culture had ill-prepared me for.  
We are insulated from death in our lack of involvement even in the caring of the bodies of our loved ones who have died.  In times past it was the family who cared for the bodies of the dead, dug the graves and put them in the ground.  This didn't necessarily ease the pain but it did make death more a part of life.
In addition to this there is our cultures idolization of youth and physical attractiveness and the corresponding lack of respect for our elder population. We go to great effort and expense to prolong life and to stay looking young.  We also have way less respect for the wisdom of age than do other cultures.  Ernest Becker's book, "The Denial of Death" was and is prophetic.
I was thinking about all this as I read again the amazing account of Stephens death in the Bible in Acts 7.  Here was a good and innocent man, falsely accused who went unflinchingly to his death.  The vision given to Stephen, "...(he) looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God..." (Acts 7:55), was a great gift.  It speaks of the deep transformation that can and does take place in a person's heart when God claims that person for His own glory.  When that happens, then it is possible to have a radically different view of death and dying and pain and suffering.  When this happens is is possible to view life's circumstances through the lens of a loving Heavenly Father's ultimate care rather than viewing that Heavenly Father through the lens of life's circumstances.
May it be so!!