This is why I enjoy Astrid Lindgren's fairytales so much. Brothers Lionheart features death in a major way, and tries to portray it as a perfectly normal thing that shouldn't be feared (particularly powerful at the end where >!the protagonist jumps off a cliff with his dying brother on his back, and realizes they're going to enter a second afterlife... and he's just excited, yelling "Yes, Jonathan, I can see the light!"!<).

There's also a Finnish fairytale called "The Prince of Shadowland" where the big brother of a boy dies; the boy can't accept it, finds a strange book and after opening it, suddenly finds himself in Shadowland where his brother is the prince. It turns out at the end Shadowland is the afterlife, and the brother sends the boy back to the real world; yet the boy, after his adventure, has matured and accepted the reality his brother is gone. His reaction is basically "I'll join him there one day, but not now... I still have my own life left to live.".