No one knows. For all we know, she never died and is still alive today. That makes just as much sense as proclaiming that she was assumed into heaven. The point is that, in the absence of historical record, the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that we do not know. The fact that the Church would excommunicate someone for not buying the assumption dogma is one reason I am no longer a practising Catholic.
Perhaps you do not know that according to Catholic Tradition, handed down from mouth to mouth, person to person, the Blessed Virgin Mary was visited by St. Michael the Archangel, who escorts people to heaven, that she would be dying soon.
All the apostles were miraculously transported from their various posts around the world at that time to her bedside. They were there to witness her death. So does it make more sense to you that Catholics believe in this dogma of the Assemption?
I wondered about your name. Too Catholic for me.
You are always a Catholic. You may not be an active Catholic today, but that doesn’t preclude you from sitting down with a priest and talking about the questions you harbor tomorrow.
Once a person is baptized a Catholic they will always live and die a Catholic. How they choose to live their life will determine where they will be going at the moment of their death. Purgatory or ??