[Lalwendë]

I'm starting to think that death for Men in Middle-earth was gift precisely because it took them away from the 'long defeat'. Despite any efforts that anyone could make (Man, Hobbit, Elf or Dwarf), war would still go on. This is seen in Tolkien's abandoned tale of the Fourth Age, where Men start to take an interest in the darkness again; even Tolkien realised how fundamentally depressing this was and abandoned the tale. Though I think the message is pretty clear in his published work that despite everything, evil could only be dispelled for a time. The Elves knew this better than anyone, simply due to their long lives and lengthier experience of the world, and they were doomed to stay in that world. Men on the other hand can leave the world and maybe go to a better place, that's their 'gift'.

I cannot recall any mention of death in Middle-earth as being in any way frightening, apart from to those mortals who had once been Elves, e.g. Arwen, to whom it must have been a fundamentally alien concept. She lingers on for some time after Aragorn's death, presumably until she has learned to accept her new fate. This view of death as something natural, to be welcomed is a very modern view, one shared by Christians, New Agers, and others, but it is wholly different to the terrifying notions of judgement and ideas of 'purgatory', not just in traditional Roman Catholicism but in other faiths.