The Dalai Lama suggests we should contemplate death every day...
The master goes into it very consciously, deliberately. Meditation is total death, voluntary death. One dies into oneself. Before death ever comes the master dies. She dies every day. Whenever she meditates she goes into death. She reaches to those heights, those depths, and, slowly, slowly as meditation becomes natural, she starts living death. Then each moment of his life is also a moment of death. Each moment she dies to the past and remains fresh, because the moment you die to the past you become alive to the present. She dies continuously and remains as fresh as dewdrops or lotus leaves in the early morning sun. Her freshness, her youth, her timelessness, depend on the art of dying. And then when actual death comes she has nothing to fear, because she has known this death thousands of times. She is thrilled, enchanted; she dances! Joyously she wants to die. Death does not create fear in him; on the contrary, a tremendous attraction, a great pull. And because he dies joyously he dies without becoming unconscious, and he knows the total secret of death. Knowing it, he has the master key that can unlock all the doors. He has the key that can open the door of God.