Do you want to die? Not if Mr De Grey Has His Way!

About 10 minutes ago, I read an article on a scientific quest for immortality. It's about one Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper De Grey, "a gerontologist and co-author of Ending Aging" --I'm quoting straight from the article--who seems to think he can give us the secret to glorious immortality (insert evil sounding manic laughter).
Well,not quite that way, but a rather sci-fi kind of method by which he would develop "therapies for various kinds of damage" in the human body and his SENS Research Foundation (please get your facts and stuff from Wiki. I'm not doing your dirty work) is actually working toward "changing the genetic composition of people who are already alive" ---which somehow sounds like an effort to change us all into BT Brinjal--and so people who will be healthy will stay younger longer and, naturally, stay alive that much longer.
The gist of the whole long-winded interview is that this man thinks that stopping or delaying ageing will mean a corresponding delay in death. Naturally, because I lost the healthiest, tallest, strappingest, fittest and handsomest member of my family at the age of 41--my father--in a car accident, where a nine-year-old me, my two-year-old sister and delicate mom, all frail and far too weak by comparison, survived-- I know for sure that death is as much related to aging as disease is related to the evil eye. (Okay, exaggeration. Still.) My father's Life Insurance people were probably as shocked as we were because they never expected to have to pay up so soon, considering his excellent health. Point being, there are accidents, tragedies, natural disasters, and all sorts of wierd stuff including fires and floods and riots and wars and murders, that kill a giant lot more people than aging does.
So Mr de Grey, I can say this with grim-faced certainty, you will certainly not be able to defeat death.Sure, you may be able to increase average longevity through increasing the quality of life. And in that, I would be your cheerleader.
But this is not the reason why I felt the urge to pen my thoughts. The writer of this article posed an introspective question at the very end: Do I really wish to die?
Hmmm.........................DO I? I don't know.
I have never thought of immortality, because I always considered death as a given. In fact, humans do want to die. Freud described it as 'thanatos' that subconscious death drive in humans that competes with 'eros'--the urge to live. Freud actually considered the death drive to be behind our aggressive instincts and the urge to go indulge in life-risking adventure sports... the urge to want to break your back or your neck. Erm... sorry, he didn't say those words, at least.
Coming back to me, I still can't decide whether I want to die. I do know what I DON'T want: to outlive everyone else that I love. Meaning, yes, I want to die--before anyone else in my family does.

But then that also means there would be someone else who doesn't want me to die. I suppose, it's not death that scares us so much, but the death of our loved ones.
And I can talk with great clarity about the pull of the endless hereafter--like it says in the Quran and other religious books--an endless life. It's not so much the endless life we seek but that we'd get to be forever with the people we love. Not just that "I won't die" but that "none of the good people will die" and that we'll all be "happy forever." After all, we only wish for death when we are sad beyond measure. Nobody wants to die when they're feeling top of the world!
And that again, brings me to an important point.
I love the idea of the endless afterlife, because it would be (supposedly) a world free of strife. Free of not just ageing but also wars, fires, floods, murders, rapes, sexism, racism, casteism, treachery, trickery and all the rotten stuff in this world. I don't know about you, but for me, there's not much point in living forever in a world that stinks beyond measure, where so much is going wrong and nothing of it can I fix.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a pessimist or a doom-monger. I still think I have a beautiful life and that this world offers joys gallore. It's just that if I would wish for a very, very long life, I'd like it to be in
a world that's worth living in. And not just for a privileged handful.