Checking my understanding:
I think he’s saying that being aware that death could come at any time is a way to get yourself to be aware of and to enjoy the present moment.
There are other ways, like meditation, to get to that awareness of the present, right? Thinking of death is just one way, one technique, to get there. If we lived in a world without death, we’d have other ways to get there and we’d still want to, right?