Explaining death to a toddler.

[Id82]

Not sure if this is the right place to post this.

I have a child who will be two in a few months. As she grows she will become more and more curious about the world and I'm sure the topic of death will come up at some point. Being an agnostic atheist I don't really know how to explain the concept of death to a child without freaking them out. Death being death you don't exist anymore blah blah blah. When I was young my parents told me I'd be going to heaven and if I died and went to Heaven they would come and get me and bring me home other silly things like that.
I don't want to teach her about some place that I don't believe exists, how do you comfort a child with the thought of not existing anymore? Keeping in mind a three year old child can't really understand too much.
Any other parents here have experience with this?

[SomeApe]

The thought of not existing anymore is a lot less frightening when you realise you haven't existed before your birth either.

[rookie]

I've been there many times. Death is like you go away forever. Stop breathing and eating and playing and just go away forever. You'll get a lot more silly verbs depending on the child. But they'll straighten up when they figure out you're being Very Serious. Anyways, how much more in detail you get would dependon so many different things. But that's the young toddler version of the concep tof death in the Rookie household.