Choosing death is wholly at the soul's discretion. In the planning stage for your lifetime, you need to co-opt a bunch of souls to play various roles in your life, and it's only natural that you turn to those souls with whom you have incarnated before and hang out with on the soul plane. This group is your spiritual family, and you all play many different roles for each other during your many incarnations together, alternating as parent and child, say.
You create and discharge karma within your group, and make countless contracts with other members. These are your soul mates and in a typical lifetime, you encounter dozens - parents, siblings, friends, lovers, mates, business partners, etc. - all of them soul mates in that you've incarnated with them before.
So, if you're concerned that death will separate you from a special loved one, relax. You'll only be physically apart for a few short years (and never spiritually apart), and then you can be with each other for eternity if you choose. It's just a matter of time scale.
When you enter into contracts with souls who will incarnate as the other players in your life drama and other important people in your life, you are careful to specify the nature of support you will give each other … or not, if you require the interaction to be challenging. For example, you might contract with your parents-to-be to form a stable family unit into which you plan to be born. From the soul plane, you eagerly oversee their love-making and ensure conception occurs at just the right moment. Or you might contract with one or both of your parents to give you a more challenging upbringing to make you "a stronger person."

Contracts
Once we've agreed to be each others' players in a life drama, we form many different types of contracts with each other:
o Primary parental contract. This obviously includes mother and father agreements, with one or other predominating as primary. This person may be a positive or negative influence depending on your specific growth needs. The non-primary parent may not have any influence in your lifetime except as a sperm donor.
o Siblings and birth order. Of all the mirrors in your life, siblings are probably the most relentless because they don't let you get away with much. Birth order is vital. Being the first may boost leadership and self-reliance traits, while being youngest may result in expectations of being babied in life.
o Friends and enemies. We all need friends and allies to get us through life, but we may also need others to challenge us by betrayal in business, romance, etc. Ironically, to fill the latter role, you turn to the soul who loves you the most, often imploring that soul because doing you harm is very painful to them.
o Transition contract. This is one of the most important contracts you can make. The individual will be the one to release you when you are dying. Sometimes, if the relationship is very close, this person will actually be able to say the words: "It's okay to leave. You can let go if you like. We will all be fine." Or it may be a nurse in the hospital who gives you permission to leave.
o Greeter. This is the person who agrees to greet you in spirit when you're ready to go Home. Sometimes it's a mate who has passed over ahead of you, but most of the time more like an aunt or uncle, or possibly a high school friend. Or maybe even your faithful, old dog.
o Facilitator. This person agrees to interact with you in your life at a critical time in order to check that you are on the path you planned, and if you're off course, they will remind you of your original soul intention and direction. These contracts are intended to have such intensity that you cannot ignore them, such as an irresistible romantic encounter that "bumps" you into some kind of new awareness.
o Karmic contracts. Karma, as we know it, has now been released to enable you to evolve more rapidly, but a contract involving karma may be the fastest and most effective means to facilitate growth.
o Minor contracts. Because you're also a bit player in other people's dramas, sometimes you agree to a contract to help another member of your soul family. So, many of your contracts have more to do with the other people involved than with you, such as simply "holding the space" as the other person goes through growth or being their Transition Contract person.

Exit Points
You-the-soul also establishes several exit points for a lifetime for two eventualities:
1. You see no possibility of your life mission being met under the current circumstances, so you call it quits.
2. You feel complete with your life mission and goals, so you return Home "cum laude."

Exit points are a little like exit ramps as you fly down the freeway of life. They can be a serious illness, a fatal accident or murder, and you-the-soul responds in one of three ways:
1. "I'm done here, so I'm going Home."
2. "I'm not done and intend to press on at full throttle!" In this case, you quickly recover from the illness or accident, and have new gusto towards your life and mission.
3. "I'm not sure, so I'll wait until the next exit point," in which case, your life goes on pretty much as before.

Knowing about exit points makes a huge difference, because then, death is not something being done to you, but something you're choosing. You can't blame "God" or the Grim Reaper; it's all about you saying, "Okay, I've gotten enough juice out of this lifetime, so it's time to go." And know that all your loved ones were in on your exit point plans and are in on your choice to go Home now.
Of course, it only brings you comfort if you can make that mental leap to include your soul in your answer to: "Who am I really?" Maybe that's a stretch, but what's the alternative? Wallowing in "poor little me" for the rest of your time here? No way. However, keep browsing this site.