diff --git a/include/aws/common/priority_queue.h b/include/aws/common/priority_queue.h
index 4478b95d0..a3434091b 100644
--- a/include/aws/common/priority_queue.h
+++ b/include/aws/common/priority_queue.h
@@ -83,6 +83,17 @@ void aws_priority_queue_init_static(
     size_t item_size,
     aws_priority_queue_compare_fn *pred);
 
+/**
+ * Initializes a queue node to a default value that indicates the node is not in the queue.  If we used the
+ * classical indexing for array-based heaps (starting at 1) we wouldn't need this, but because zero is a valid node
+ * index and we use SIZE_MAX as "not-in-the-heap" we need an init so that people aren't hard-coding magic SIZE_MAXs
+ * around all over the place.
+ *
+ * @param node priority queue node to initialize with a default value
+ */
+AWS_COMMON_API
+void aws_priority_queue_node_init(struct aws_priority_queue_node *node);
+
 /**
  * Checks that the backpointer at a specific index of the queue is
  * NULL or points to a correctly allocated aws_priority_queue_node.
diff --git a/source/priority_queue.c b/source/priority_queue.c
index 86a91feb3..dfa071f75 100644
--- a/source/priority_queue.c
+++ b/source/priority_queue.c
@@ -400,3 +400,7 @@ size_t aws_priority_queue_size(const struct aws_priority_queue *queue) {
 size_t aws_priority_queue_capacity(const struct aws_priority_queue *queue) {
     return aws_array_list_capacity(&queue->container);
 }
+
+void aws_priority_queue_node_init(struct aws_priority_queue_node *node) {
+    node->current_index = SIZE_MAX;
+}
diff --git a/source/task_scheduler.c b/source/task_scheduler.c
index 4467b1249..bca150e39 100644
--- a/source/task_scheduler.c
+++ b/source/task_scheduler.c
@@ -135,7 +135,7 @@ void aws_task_scheduler_schedule_now(struct aws_task_scheduler *scheduler, struc
         (void *)task,
         task->type_tag);
 
-    task->priority_queue_node.current_index = SIZE_MAX;
+    aws_priority_queue_node_init(&task->priority_queue_node);
     aws_linked_list_node_reset(&task->node);
     task->timestamp = 0;
 
@@ -161,7 +161,7 @@ void aws_task_scheduler_schedule_future(
 
     task->timestamp = time_to_run;
 
-    task->priority_queue_node.current_index = SIZE_MAX;
+    aws_priority_queue_node_init(&task->priority_queue_node);
     aws_linked_list_node_reset(&task->node);
     int err = aws_priority_queue_push_ref(&scheduler->timed_queue, &task, &task->priority_queue_node);
     if (AWS_UNLIKELY(err)) {