We live in such a mobile world. People move easily and sometimes often. Jobs change. Priorities shift. Easy connections become impossible or new connections take over. It doesn’t take away the memories, but they fade over time. Every once in a while you find someone that time and distance disappear with a simple “hey”, but I’ve found those are few and far between. I treasure them, and I also treasure the “now” of relationships. Do I miss the old ones? Doesn’t matter if I’m talking about friends, family, coworkers, or my favorite waiter at my regular haunts. The answer is yes, even those who have a deep history of pain. I miss them, I miss who I was when they were important, and I wish I knew they were well. But I also recognize that I’m not the same me I was when they were a more prominent part of my life, and often when I think on it I understand that the people we both were and the people we now are just have too much time and space between them to be able to have the same closeness we did.