The history of life is often told as a vital stream running through bodies, in a dramatic struggle against death. Standard theories see organisms inheriting life, with traits favoured or hindered by natural selection. Life and death seem to be opposing forces. Here, we discuss an alternative perspective on death and extinction that occur across all levels of life from molecules to ecosystems. Rather than viewing death as the cessation of life processes of an individual, we recognise that individuality is not only a pre-requisite for death; death is also a pre-requisite for individuality. Hence, death is intimately linked with the creative process of life and the rise of new lineages. Here, forms of life may be seen not as discrete individuals or species but rather as continuous processes. In multicellular organisms, death is seen as a nested process involving continuous, creative and destructive dying at multiple levels. The termination of an evolutionary lineage is seen as a non-binary ecological process of gradual disappearance, where lineages, their individuals, and their cells all have agency. Queering the binary perception of life/death can reveal complex and nuanced structures of life. Dying has always been part of the unfolding of life.