Fabio Listrani's new deck deals with death,
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=264196
more specific, with Mexican folklore, belief and iconology about death. I don't know too much about it, but it seems a very interesting choice of deck theme, and one that confronts you on every card with death. As you said, we actually are confronted with death all the time, just push it back from our minds.
I don't have the deck (yet) but I find it interesting and I like also Listrani's first deck, Night Sun, which also deals with dark and usually suppressed aspects of our lives. His Death card is a pregnant woman.
It's a pity there is no Frida Kahlo deck (far as I know) because she's the artist who constantly worked on the topic of death in life, and her art really deals with it honestly and poetically.
From the decks I have, I think for a death-related reading, I'd either pick the above-mentioned NIght Sun, or the Wild Unknown with its stark and simple depiction of growth and decay, or simply a Tarot de Marseille. There, Death is really Death, influenced by medieval Dance of Death iconography, before we started sugarcoating it with our postmodern wish to turn it into Transition. Yes, it's a transition, and I wouldn't read it as crass harsh Death to a querent, but the old decks were made at a time when people dealt much more openly with Death. They had to.
Another deck that lends itself well to death-related readings is the Stretch tarot, I can't even tell you exactly why, but I think there's a gently macabre-melancholic streak running through this deck. And if it's only the fact that all the serious people on the photographs are dead and yet look at us as if they could tell us more about it.
I think Seven Stars has a Deck of the Death with beautiful Mannerist depictions of death, I've always wanted that deck. Mannerism and Baroque continued to develop the medieval Death theme but took it into a more polished, ironical or Classicizing direction. Looks like a great deck.
If you look at any deck, I think the Death card, 3 of Swords, 10 of Swords and also 4 of Swords can give you an indication how it deals with the topic. In all these Swords card, Death echoes more or less strongly, and they are the cards where an artist can express his/her concept of death, finality, termination.
Besides, I'd look at the Saturn cards: 7 Pentacles, 5 Wands, 3 Swords (as mentioned above), 10 Wands, 8 Cups; and the Scorpio cards, especially 5 of Cups (ruled by Mars and thus more difficult than the 6 and 7).
All these cards are indicators IMO how the author deals with near-death motifs.
PS: AJ is very right, that's a great idea.
