I honestly think its the other way around. The harsh truth of life is that it is extremely short. The beautiful lie of death is that theres an afterlife...
I wish all people are contented with their life so there is no need to take it away. My best friend commit suicide because she wasn't contented with what she had, but thank god she survived and go on with her life.
Yeah, just what we need - a bunch of emo teenagers who (because they lived oh-so long and know all about sacrifice and pain just because their hot classmate won't fuck them) think they're deep if they call death a painful truth. Look - just because something is written in a witty and clever way, that does not make it true. It could be full of bullshit - very much like what I've just written here - and the only thing dumber than a dumb person writing something dumb, is a smart person believing it simply because it sounds 'cool'.
I agree with Thomas Hobbes that left to its own devices, life is nasty, brutish, and short. Everything we did in society is to augment the natural order of things. Personally, I think life has a negative feedback system for rewarding bad behavior, considering the ones who are generally the most ruthless (and I'm talking business and even before civilization) tend to do better than the altruistic ones. It does not seem fair, but that is why we have a society. But all in all, to take a grand look at things even more than our petty little existence, life and the universe is quite beautiful. Just very rough for the living.
Neither of them are a lie, nor are they necessarily painful or beautiful.