I get where you are coming from and empathize with what you are trying to communicate, but I will have to challenge you on the notion that when people think of death, that they think of the body. It seems to me many people think of death as the end of everything, an eternity of “non-being” which to me is utter nonsense. One can imagine, like you said, the “I” no longer being part of the equation, even though it is still the “I” that is imagine it.
But when people ask “can you imagine being dead” I presume (wrongly?) they mean the “experience” of “nothingness” (again, I believe the “experience of nothingness” is bullshit, since nothing is not an experience, and therefore the whole concept of “nothing” to me, is utter nonsense).
One can only imagine decreased forms of life and call it “death”. Even when I describe what happens in my dreams when I “die”, as in, when I am dying and going into a deep sleep/deep peace, there is still an element of consciousness, some very depleted form of sense perception, and once it goes to near zero I wake up (out of necessity).
Question: Do you think/believe that after death there is “nothing” or do you, like me, find the concept of “nothing” to be nonsensical?