I’ve been asked what the most difficult moment in my life has been. There are lots of challenging moments in all of our personal and professional lives, mine included. But I don’t even have to ponder that question as one moment and one image springs immediately to mind. Perhaps it is the same for you.

The most difficult moment I’ve ever experienced was delivering my brother’s eulogy. Not because I didn’t have enough to say. I had more than enough as I flipped through and shared the mental photo album of our life together. I found the requisite funny moments and the poignant ones as I paid tribute to the life of the person I never thought I would be without.

What was difficult, of course, was the truth underlying the moment. When my sister-in-law called to tell me that my brother had died, that there had been an accident at home, I slid to the floor holding the phone in my hand. I can still feel the pain and disbelief. I remember thinking, in those hours afterward, hours when I tried to make sense of her words, that I had just talked to him, that we had made plans. How could that vibrant voice on the phone be no longer? How was it possible that I’d never hear “Hi, honey” as I answered the phone or his inevitable sign off of “Give kisses all around.”

I have said many times that one of the many lessons I’ve learned from loss is that life changes in the space between one heartbeat and the next. That is all it takes. And when we allow ourselves to think that things will “always be this way” or that we know what will happen tomorrow, well, we are often wrong.

Yesterday a beloved member of our professional team woke up with a headache. He told his wife he was going back to bed and he did. When she went to check on him, he was unresponsive. He’d had a massive stroke and died.

We never know when life is going to change, when that space between one heartbeat and the next will be the last. What do we do with that knowledge, with that truth? I am not suggesting that we adopt a “nothing matters” mindset. Quite the contrary. What I believe is that we must always remember the fragility of life and the importance of making every day and every moment count. It is my hope that we can greet with gratitude and mindfulness, with awareness and with joy, without regrets and, always, with a full heart.