The power in your intent to understand death is excellently displayed.
For me, death is just the purchase price for being alive. It comes as a matched set. What is this experience worth to you? Is it worth the price?
Again for me, without death or if it only happened centuries later, would we ever experience or promote compassion?
Something has to wake us up to the beauty and preciousness of now.
Your brother helped you to see it more clearly.
My mother died after a twelve year battle with leukemia, at 48, I was 20.
My wife of stomach cancer, within a year, at 33.
Death, at its best does not put us to sleep but rather wakes us up to the beauty around us, the gratitude for being here, and the joy we can bring to others.