What were my last words?

Whenever my friend Carol leaves the house –- or when one of her family members leaves -– she makes sure she says "goodbye" and "I love you" to them, even if they have had a disagreement.

This habit was born from tragedy. When Carol was 8 years old, her mother took her own life after years of battling depression. Carol and her 12-year-old sister were home at the time and found their mother in the bathtub, with blood everywhere. She never came home from the hospital. Although Carol was left with numerous unanswered questions, she felt relieved that she had told her mom "I love you" before she died.

Carol is now a now a wife, mother of two, and financial services manager in her 40s with a fulfilling life. But that childhood experience is embedded in her soul, and the soul of her two siblings.

"I think all of us feel that every goodbye could be the last," she explained to me. "We don't embrace every conversation we have, but we don't like unresolved conflict. So we tell each other 'I love you' when we say goodbye, even if we're not always feeling it. It's a mechanism we have put into place to protect ourselves from ever having to wonder, 'What were my last words?'

After hearing Carol's story a few years ago, I began doing the same thing. You never know.