The Value of Existentialism in Meaning of Death?

I gave up on existentialism after reading Kafka's "The Trial" in college and getting very, very bummed about the meaningless of it all. This was in a literature class, mind you, not a philosophy class, so I didn't have anyone outlining what "existentialism" was. This was kind of like getting thrown into the deep end of the pool without a helmet. Or a life jacket. You get my point.

Roll forward a number of years and I downloaded a podcast on "Death Anxiety" aribitrarily on iTunes. The lecture was given by Ernesto Spinelli, an existentialist therapist from London, at a 2008 Conference on Personal Meaning. It was re-broadcast as a portion of a larger episode of the podcast series called "Big Ideas."

Anyway, I found the lecture to be pretty phenomenal in outlining the usage of contemplating meaninglessness as a way of creating meaning. I don't know... made sense at the time.

All I know for sure is that I feel like a more evolved person for having listened to it (while commuting to class the other day!), and I post it here because I know that some aspect of my studies in this Masters in Gerontology program I'm in will revolve around aspects of death and dying.

Here's the link to info on the podcast, where you can listen to it streaming:

http://www.tvo.org/TVOsites/WebObjects/TvoMicrosite.woa?bi?1229202000000

Here's where you can download Spinelli's portion of the podcast on iTunes. WARNING: This link will automatically attempt to open iTunes on your computer so you can get the podcast. If that's what you want to do, great! Otherwise, don't click. Once iTunes opens, scroll through the episodes until you find the one from 12/13/08, and there you have it!
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=129166905