The approach I take on the philosophy of death is through fractals, chaos, ecology, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and dissipative structures.
Dissipative structures are complex structures that arise from disorder due to a flow of energy. A good example of this is a whirlpool forming on a river. The flow of water molecules down stream is disordered, but when they hit an obstruction such as a rock, a whirlpool forms. One can conclude that the circular shape of the whirlpool funnel is now more organized than just a mere flow of water down stream.
It is the same with a cell, which can described as a stable structure of molecules that forms due the flow of chemical energy between them, just like a whirlpool on a river, but it's much more complicated and richer.
And so you build on complexity more and more. Cells form higher order organisms, worms, insects, and animals. And in each level in the hierarchy there is a transfer of energy which powers the next level of complexity. Kind of like whirlpools within whirlpools, or zooming out of a Mandelbrot set.
Eventually, by compounding this build up of complexity many times over, humans emerge with their big brains endowed with enough degrees of freedom to begin describing the world. A small of part of world is reflected and encoded in the vast neural network in the brain. That's again like zooming in the Mandelbrot set.
This system is sustained by a constant flow of energy which comes from the sun: light through photosynthesis give energy to plants, plants give energy to herbivore animals that eat them, and other animals eat other animals for those highly prized energy contents, and then humans eat plants and animals for same reason.
And so when you die, that's like putting a stopper in the bathtub. The whirlpool disappears and scatters its molecules into the immediate surroundings. In case of life, the molecules of your body diffuse into the environment for use by other dissipative structures such as bacteria, or bugs that feed on your left over energy contents.
