Yes, the average man lives in denial. Those who meditate on their mortality are then often angry (e.g. rank and file atheists at war with God), bargain (e.g. what most religious and spiritual folks do: "If I do this or that ritual and believe this or that dogma, my individuality will be preserved."), or are simply depressed (e.g. morbid obsession of nihilists with vanity, horror, and doom; melancholy of all those "suffering artists"; and so on). But the final goal is acceptance.

When one fully accepts one's mortality without being angry, depressed, or still hoping to somehow cheat one's individual death (in vain, I must add), death is no longer an existential tragedy and life stops to be absurdity because of that. The rest is still a delusion -- a more informed one, less tinted with falsehoods, but a delusion anyway.