I think you are misinterpreting Scripture. God says Adam will die the moment he eats from the tree, but after eating, Adam "lives," in a physical sense, but his work becomes toil (Gen 3:17). And yes, Adam then returns to the ground when he dies, separated from God. That doesn't mean literal death never happened before. It means Adam has chosen the fleshy over the spiritual, the earthly over the Godly -- and if he wants to live by the earth, then he will die by the earth, without God's presence in his life.
"The moment"? Where does Scripture say that? Nowhere does it say that Adam's death would *immediately* follow Adam's sin. Scripture says that if Adam sins, he will surely die. And he did. See Romans 6:23 and James 1:15 for more detail.