Killing your darlings

I read a page recently about the "Death of Superman" story (https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/an-oral-history-of-the-original-death-and-return-of-superman-25-years-later ).  It included a quote from someone (who is not important) that "You know what you get from killing a character: You get to show just how much that character means — to his friends, family, enemies, to the whole world!"  As with so many things, it sparked a thought about role-playing games.

Death as a chance to see how much a character mattered is something I've missed in D&D.

Often there doesn't seem to be any real chance of character death.  Between the players being conservative -- especially about few fights per day so they are almost always at full spell capacity -- and the DM taking things a bit easy -- the monsters engage the party mostly one-to-one and generally respect the fighters rather than concentrating fire on the casters first -- it often feels like the question is more of whether the players are forced to spend resources (potions / scrolls / magic charges ) or not rather than one of whether the characters will die.

Even if the characters do die, it seems like there will be resurrection.  Not comic book resurrection which the reader expects while the characters don't, but resurrection as a known and accessible "technology" in the game world.   Partially because the rules have spells and items that will do resurrection so surely the characters should be able to find people to do it.  Also partly because players don't want to stop playing their character, and having access to resurrection magic avoids that.  (As a side note, I think players reacting poorly to character deaths is part of why DM's go easy with monster tactics and spell choice.)

The result has been -- in my experience -- character death is extremely rare, is viewed as being a bit unfair on the player whose character died, and instantly leads to a side adventure to get the character resurrected.   Which means we never get the ability to have a the eulogy or a wake.  We never see the other characters question whether adventuring is worth it or reflect on what started the all on whatever quest they are following.  We never get the small side scenes where a character does something -- maybe just buying ale at a tavern -- and recalls that it would have been different if their friend hadn't died. 

I would like more of that.