I learned to grasp the harsh reality of knowing that any person, no matter how great, how old, or how healthy they are can be taken in an instant from the moment my father told me that my 9-year-old brother had died suddenly of brain complications when I was 7.

Along with that reality comes positives and negatives. You love deeper. You live slower. You say I love you more. You form more meaningful relationships. You learn these things are important after playing hundreds of memories in your head over and over, recreating the scenes in which you could have appreciated this person more and gotten it through their head how much you really love them.

And I’ve tried to do my best turning the should-haves to I wills. I try to appreciate the presence of those I love in my life and let them know how much I care about them.

It wasn’t until three weeks ago when I realized that as much as I told myself I was truly valuing the people who I love in my life in recognition of my brother’s death, I really wasn’t.

My entire perception changed the moment I received a text message telling me one of my best friends from high school, Mike, was in a coma after a terrible car accident.

Mike was a one of the first friends I made during high school. Looking back, my entire high school career would have been different without his friendship. He was the kind of friend I could always depend on to make me laugh in my worst moments.

He could always give me an honest answer when I needed it the most. We had a strictly platonic relationship (I dated his best friend for almost two years), but he still would go above and beyond to let me know he cared about me, doing things like buying me flowers when I had a terrible day or walking to my house in the rain to give me a birthday card he made. We referred to one another as family for four years.

But unfortunately, we both unintentionally let our friendship fade beginning after graduation. Our lives quickly moved in different directions. We went from hanging out with each other almost every weekend to only seeing each other during breaks, to hardly ever speaking. I got so caught up with my college friends and the life I’ve made for myself here that I rarely even thought about the people who helped make me who I am.

You can tell yourself that friendships all fade for a good reason, but it’s far from the truth. People change, but they still stay the same at their core, I’ve realized this while clinging to my core group of friends from high school in the midst of Mike’s tragedy. Sure, we go off in different directions and make different friends, but it doesn’t mean that we no longer can have occasional catch-ups with the people who helped build us.

And even though you might not have spoken to your old best friends in years, they mean more to you than they think. From the moment I heard that Mike was in a coma, he consumed my entire mindset. All I could do was worry about how he was doing, remember about what a great friend he was to me and kick myself for letting a friendship like that fade away without even a fight. I realized he still meant the world to me.

And I was lucky this time, because Mike woke up eventually. There is still time to fully appreciate him and the others I’ve shoved to the side over the past few years and fully grasp every thing I’ve gained from my brother’s death.