I'm not sure that I would make death the pivotal point in life, do you mean like the idea of the "good death" that native Americans had or other warrior cultures had? That honour or endurance mattered more than life itself? I do find some of those histories or that sort of cultural idea completely horrifying.
Perhaps you mean the finite nature of life? This also could be true, I have been thinking about that lately, for some time I used to say to people that I thought settling down and having children, a family and home making of a sort, had passed me by but it was a jarring experience when I reflected at the point when that was most true.
I've heard it said of people by friends who work in corrections that "they had no plan", which makes sense, most of the people they are talking about definitely are chaotic neutral or chaotic evil, some of them are neutral evil but that's more rare, but I think that this can apply in a more general or broad sense to most people. Like the idea that "you are going to die one day so get your skates on, make plans and execute them, waste not a minute, momento mori and carpi deim", even among those that are exercising that level of awareness, does not EVER seem to execute smoothly.
Of the one or two examples that I know of for definite who had a sort of five or ten year plan, get the qualifications, get the experience, get the jobs, build the CV, make the connections, get married, have children etc. etc. one or two of those people suffered major bouts of depression when they accomplished it all. Its something that didnt go unnoticed to me, even when they did not describe it as such or label it as such themselves (in one case actively avoided labels of that kind by keeping up the mother of all fronts to everyone). So, they've been cautionary tales on that and I dont worry that I've let spontaneity run away with itself in my own life.
As they say life is what happens when you are making other plans. The Cohen Brothers movie A Serious Man is all about this I think.