The answer to the riddle: The first thing she has taken away is her freedom. I do like puzzles :)
My toughs on what it means to die. This used to be one of the questions I would repeat over and over in my head when I had time to waste, couldn't sleep etc. At age 12 I was of the strong belief the experience after death would be very much like it was before you were born, you would not be in it, a void blank nothingness. This idea while bleak seemed to answer all the questions I had.... but eventually my thoughts started to change. As I became more interested in math and physics, I eventually came to a conclusion that a kind of reincarnation must exists. Its all just a matter of scale and time.

What it is to be alive, is all the parts that make up 'you' and more importantly the correct arrangement of those parts. If you change the arrangement too much, like removing all the blood, you will stop being alive. Now we simply need to consider a truly infinite universe, which within it will contain all of the different possible parts, and over time all of the possible arrangements.

Basically, even if you die, at this time, on this planet, over time, the chance of that arrangement making up 'you' ever existing again, is almost certain by a factor of over 1x10^7:1
The really interesting part is all the stuff that happens between the times we exists for.
All the parts that make us up were at one point stardust, and will be again, the pattern repeating, over and over, but changing a little each time as well.

I'm am also willing to believe all of this is wrong, If I can come up with a better theory, but so far, this one does me well.