Kyra, when you post, don't be afraid to use HEADLINES this size. Small paragraphs also make long posts easier to read.

BTW, at my age (born Jan, 14, 1930), I think often of the words which William Shakespeare put in the mouth of Hamlet in his great soliloquy on life and death:
TO BE, OR NOT TO BE

...Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
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You mention the connection between breath and life. My interest in the issue of death and dying, led me, in the early 1960's, to concoct the word "pneumatology"(study of the spirit). It also led me to lecture on the idea--not realizing that the word is already in the literature. Archaically, it was the term for psychology. I introduced 'pneumatology' to Wikipedia.

Pneuma (from which we get pneumatic and pneumonia) is the Greek for air, wind and breath. Our word 'spirit' comes from the Latin translation, spirito.

pneumatos hagiou (Holy, or healthy, Spirit), is another way of saying GOD.

In my opinion having a healthy pneuma is the key to having a successful death--dying without agony, excessive suffering and pain and "the dread of something after death".

G~O~D--Now & ForeverIS:Nature, Nurture & PNEUMA-ture, Thanks to Warren Farr&ME AT www.unitheist.org