— a reflection on friendship, distance, and growing apart
Part 1: The Vanishing Act
When you’re a kid, friendship is easy. It’s not something you earn, schedule, or measure—it just is. You meet, you click, you do everything together. That’s how it was with Robert. My first best friend. We were four years old, growing up in a small town in eastern Canada. We played army in the yard, dug holes like we were tunneling to the other side of the planet, and turned Dinkie cars into epic convoys across sandy gravel driveways. When they built a K-Mart up the hill, we’d sneak onto the construction site after hours and climb on the life-sized Tonka toys like kings of our imaginary empire. I can still smell the tar truck that came down the road every summer to seal the dirt. We were inseparable. Until we weren’t.
My dad took a new job, and when I was eight, we moved to the big city. Robert and I made big plans—running away, writing every day, staying best friends forever. We meant it. We were eight. I got one letter. I wrote four more. And then… life moved on.
Moving day in Montreal was a whirlwind of boxes, heat, and new names: Paul, Kenny, Adam, Heather, Lori. They became my new orbit. We played hide and seek that spanned entire streets. Came home when the streetlights came on. Adam’s little sister had a crush on me and kept trying to kiss me. I was eight. “Eww, girls.”
At school, I met Randall and AJ. Helen was another girl with a crush. I rejected her, and she became my mortal enemy. At age eight—”eww, girls”—it felt like a pretty big deal. And it lasted right up until I never saw her again 7 or 8 years later. Somewhere in that chaos, (another) Steve became my new best friend. We rode bikes, played Atari, pulled dumb stunts, laughed until our faces hurt. But when summer ended and school rolled around again, he was suddenly too cool for me. No fight, no falling out—I just stopped existing to him.
Enter Derek. Same vibe. Same nerdy-but-not energy. We both loved sci-fi, electronics, music. He made light shows in his bedroom. He rolled that passion into doing laser shows for a living, last I checked. For two years, we were sidekicks. Then my family took a long summer road trip through eastern Canada, and when we got back… Derek had become best friends with Steve. History repeating. He’d upgraded to a new BMX, complete with pegs on the back, and the girl I used to “date” in that awkward, pre-teen way now rode everywhere with him. I still had a too-small 3-speed and a front-row seat to my own obsolescence.
High school was different. Broader. Messier. Richer. I made a lot of new friends—Simon, Kyle, Richard, Mike, Alan. Paul, Kenny, Randal and AJ were still around, the carryovers from elementary school and moving day. We played sports, launched rockets, hung out on weekends, told each other everything. Those years felt like they’d last forever. But they didn’t. We graduated. And just like that, the group scattered—like someone had opened a window and let the wind carry us wherever it wanted.
Part 2: Friendship Was Different Back Then
Friendship used to be ambient. It just existed in the background like oxygen. You didn’t think about it. You didn’t manage it. It wasn’t something you curated or “checked in on.” It was just there. The people you liked were around, and that was enough. You didn’t schedule lunch weeks in advance. You didn’t text each other memes to prove you still existed. You just knocked on their door and asked if they could come out.
Back then, friendship didn’t have layers. No performance. No strategic silence. No trying to guess whether someone was ignoring you, overwhelmed, or quietly offended by something you said six weeks ago. You just were. Dumb together. Creative together. Bored together. If someone was mad at you, you knew. If they weren’t, you moved on. There was no emotional fine print.
There was a kind of friction to how we hung out, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. You had to be somewhere. Physically. Present. You didn’t say “lol” and move on—you laughed. Loud. From the belly. You saw the whites of each other’s eyes. You shared soda cans and pizza slices and video game controllers slick with someone else’s sweat. You didn’t sanitize your friendships. You lived in them.
The best ones were the friends who just showed up at your house uninvited. Not with a plan. Just because they were in the neighborhood and had a pocket full of quarters or an idea involving fireworks and plausible deniability. That kind of closeness—where being together didn’t require a reason—was everything. You didn’t need a project. Or a group chat. Or a hashtag. Just time. And access to each other.
You didn’t always know how important someone was until the day they weren’t there. Maybe they moved away. Maybe you did. Sometimes they just started hanging out with someone else. And yeah, it stung. But there was no drama. No subtweets. You processed it in real time, usually with a long bike ride, a good cry, or a brand-new obsession to throw yourself into. Kids are resilient like that. Maybe because we didn’t know how else to be.
It wasn’t about talking every day—it was about knowing someone had your back when it counted. That if a bully came after you, your friends stepped in. If your bike broke down, someone helped push it home. If your heart got broken, they let you sulk without trying to fix it. That was friendship in its purest form: no fix, no filter, no expectations—just presence.
Some friendships were like lightning—fast, bright, unforgettable. Others were slow-burning campfires that lasted years, quietly warming you without fanfare. You didn’t rank them. You didn’t analyze them. You just had them. Until you didn’t.
And even now—decades later—I still feel those absences. I still wonder where some of those people ended up. I still catch a song, or a smell, or a flicker of light out of the corner of my eye and get yanked back to a memory I didn’t even know I kept. That’s the thing about old friendships: they don’t really end. They just become part of your architecture.
Part 3: Somewhere Along the Way
Somewhere along the way, everything started to stretch out. Friendships didn’t end—they thinned. Not with a bang, but a quiet fade. There was no formal goodbye. Just less time. Less overlap. Less everything. The people you used to talk to every day started showing up once a week. Then once a month. Then maybe not at all.
The transition was so slow, I barely noticed it at first. A few of us from high school made it to the same college, and for a while the rhythm felt familiar—late-night debates, group projects, cafeteria bonding. But it wasn’t the same as before. There were no epic games of hide and seek. No biking in packs across the neighborhood. No coming home when the streetlights came on. We had schedules now. Classes. Part-time jobs. Deadlines. We hung out, sure, but it wasn’t effortless. The gravity was weaker.
And before long, college split us apart too. People changed majors. Moved out. Moved on. Wayne, Alistair, Zed—they were good friends. Real friends. We crammed for exams, pulled stupid stunts, even opened up when it counted. But I always knew the foundation wasn’t as deep. These weren’t the kids I’d scraped my knees with or played Atari until our thumbs cramped. They were the kids I met in passing on the way to becoming someone else.
Friendship got quieter after that. More formal. More scheduled. The people I saw most weren’t necessarily the people I felt closest to—they were just the ones who lived nearby, worked in the same building, occupied the same slice of time. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s different. It’s friendship with boundaries. With context. With fine print.
I used to think forever meant something. That a best friend was a permanent fixture, like your favorite album or your go-to movie. But forever is slippery. And sometimes it gets rewritten without your input. Sometimes it’s just the length of a lease. The duration of a semester. The span of a few good years before you both forget why you stopped calling.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped assuming people would stick around. Not out of cynicism—just realism. People grow. They change. And you either grow with them or you don’t. The trick is learning to appreciate what was without resenting what is.
And if you’re lucky, once in a while, someone from the past drifts back in—not because they need something, but because they remember too. And that’s enough.
Part 4: The Ones Who Came Back
Not every friendship fades to black. Some just take a long commercial break.
That’s what it felt like with Mark. We went to high school together, but we weren’t particularly close. Friendly enough, maybe—same circles, same teachers, same general orbit. But we weren’t “tight.” Then time happened. A decade passed. Maybe more. Everyone drifted. Life got bigger. Louder. More complicated.
And then one day, there he was.
I was older, married, running a mailing list back before social media ate the internet alive. The list was called “Riverdalians”—Paul gets credit for the name. It was chaotic and brilliant and full of voices that genuinely had something to say. And somehow, someone tracked down Mark’s email. He wanted in. Just like that, he was part of the mix again.
At first it was casual—banter, commentary, shared memories. But we kept peeling off from the main thread. Our side conversations started happening more and more. Same sense of humor. Same nerdy deep dives. Same instinct to look at the world sideways and then laugh about it. We realized we were weird in the same ways—and that weirdness had been quietly waiting for us to reconnect.
And we did. Not out of nostalgia. Not to catch up or close a loop. Just because it clicked. Because sometimes, when the noise clears, the right people find each other again—and this time, they stay.
That kind of friendship is rare. And maybe it only becomes possible after you’ve lived a little. After you’ve been let down. After you’ve learned the difference between people who show up for you and people who show up for what you can do for them.
There are others—people I used to be close with—who still reach out from time to time. Not to talk. Not to reconnect. Just to ask. To see if I have the thing they need. A favor. A resource. A contact. The conversation’s over before it begins. And I’ve learned to stop answering. Not out of anger. Just self-respect. Some doors are better left shut when you already know what’s on the other side.
But with Mark, there was never an ask. Just conversation. Shared space. Mutual curiosity. We reconnected not as who we were—but as who we’d become. And that’s what makes it special. That’s what makes it real.
It doesn’t erase the disappointments. Doesn’t undo the friendships that ghosted, drifted, or collapsed under their own weight. But it reminds you that not everything is lost. That sometimes, in the middle of a noisy world full of transactional relationships and fading echoes, someone answers the call—not to take, but to stay.
And when that happens? You hold on.
Part 5: The Places We Leave, The People We Carry
The shift is subtle at first. You graduate. You promise to stay in touch. Maybe you even believe it. You think these are your people—your forever people—and some of them might be. But most? Most will fade. Not because they didn’t matter, but because that’s what time does. It stretches the threads until they fray.
College was the beginning of that quiet unraveling. I went off with a few familiar faces from high school—same campus, different majors. We crossed paths, shared stories, maybe even a few classes. But the glue that held us together in adolescence didn’t survive the new variables of adulthood. Some bonds dissolved in silence. Others unraveled slowly, like a song fading out. Nobody messed up. Nobody said the wrong thing. We just… moved on.
And new people took their place. Wayne. Alistair. Sandeep. Friends who showed up in dorm rooms and coffee shops and lecture halls. Friends I stayed up late with, solved problems with, made questionable decisions with. We were all trying to figure out who we were—sometimes together, sometimes alone. It was different from high school. The friendships were good. Some were even great. But they weren’t rooted in childhood wonder or unspoken loyalty. These were adult friendships, born of proximity and timing.
And just like before, most of them didn’t last.
Some faded. Some fractured. Some were lost to things we didn’t understand at the time. People you loved who became quiet, then distant, then unreachable—not because of anything you did, but because their internal world got too loud for yours to break through. They don’t leave your life with a goodbye. They just disappear. And every once in a while, you still think of them. Wonder if they’re okay. Wonder if they know they were your best friend.
Others—like Wayne—never really disappeared. He’d reach out from time to time, but only when he needed something. A contact. A favor. A shortcut. It took me years to stop answering. To understand that being needed isn’t the same as being valued. That not every knock deserves to be answered, no matter how familiar it sounds.
But some endings hit harder. Richard was one of my best friends. The kind you assume will always be there, because they’ve always been there. We became roommates at a point when our lives were headed in very different directions. I was building a career. He was living his twenties to the fullest. It wasn’t a clash so much as a slow erosion. A missed moment here, a misunderstanding there. By the time the lease was up, so was the friendship. We didn’t fight. We just… didn’t recover. And I’ve carried that regret with me ever since—not because of how it ended, but because of how much it meant before it did.
Then there was Kevin. He didn’t go to college—he enlisted. He was my neighbor for three years. We’d ride trails in the back woods and camp out in his pop-up trailer. Not best friends, but not far from it. Years later, I found his profile on Facebook. I sent a message—something short, simple, genuine. “Hi old friend. Hope you’re well. Would love to reconnect.” His reply came the next day: “You need to let go and move on, my man.”
That one stung. Not because I expected anything. But because part of me still believed that time softened edges. That maybe nostalgia had a little magic left in it. But not everyone wants to be remembered. Not everyone remembers you the way you remember them.
And that’s the paradox of growing up: the older you get, the more people you carry—but the fewer who carry you back.
By the time you reach your thirties, you realize the friendships that survive are either forged in fire or quietly stubborn. The rest dissolve like breath on a mirror. No ceremony. No closure. Just silence. And eventually, even the silence stops surprising you.
But here’s the thing: just because someone’s gone doesn’t mean they didn’t matter. They were there, and that counts. They shaped you. They changed your course, even if just a little. And maybe you’re not supposed to chase every reconnection. Maybe the real trick is knowing who to carry forward… and who to let drift peacefully out of orbit.
Because some people are chapters. And some are footnotes. And that’s okay.
Part 6: What We Keep
Not everything fades. Some things hold fast.
A shared joke. A song lyric. A weird handshake. A photo with bad lighting and worse hair that still makes you smile. These things burrow in deep, anchoring you to moments that might otherwise drift off like dandelion fluff. And sometimes, you don’t even realize what you’ve kept until it rises up uninvited—an old memory dropping into your day like it still has something to teach you.
There are people I haven’t spoken to in decades who could walk into the room right now and still feel familiar. Not because we stayed close. Not because we left things unsaid. But because at one point in time, they got me. They saw who I was, in real time, before the layers piled on. Before the job titles, the compromises, the curated personas. We didn’t need to impress each other. We were just… there. Real. Messy. Unfiltered.
And that kind of knowing? That doesn’t always vanish just because the calendar flipped.
Sometimes, it shows back up.
Sometimes a friend you barely registered in high school becomes a daily lifeline 15 years later—because you both stuck around long enough to outgrow the noise and find each other in the quiet. Sometimes a message comes out of nowhere and pulls a piece of you out of storage. Not a favor. Not an ask. Just, “Hey. I was thinking about you.”
And suddenly, a long-lost thread tightens. Becomes real again. And this time, you hold on differently. With more care. Less assumption. You know now that most people don’t circle back. That most doors stay closed once they shut. So when one creaks open again—gently, without expectation—it’s not just surprising. It’s sacred.
I’ve started treating those moments like gifts. Not clues to the past. Not promises of the future. Just proof that something real happened. That something mattered. That even in a world addicted to speed and novelty, connection still has weight.
Because what we keep isn’t always what we thought we would. It’s not the yearbook messages or the highlight reels. It’s the strange little rituals. The way a friend used to laugh so hard they couldn’t breathe. The street corner where someone told you the truth for the first time. The dumb band you both loved too much. The silence you shared when there was nothing left to say.
And even if the person is gone—moved away, drifted out, gone silent, or just gone—that piece of them stays. It shows up in your taste in music, in how you tell stories, in the way you offer kindness to someone without asking why they need it.
They’re with you. Not as ghosts. As threads. Woven into who you are.
What we lose changes us.
But what we keep?
That’s who we become.
Part 7: What’s Left Is Ours
By now, we’ve all lost something. A friendship. A rhythm. A version of ourselves we thought would last longer than it did. But loss isn’t the end of the story. It’s just the middle. What comes next—what we do with it—that’s the part we get to write.
We don’t need to live in the past to carry its best parts with us. We don’t need mixtapes and Munch Man and milk crates full of vinyl to remember who we were—we just need to remember. To pay attention to the quiet echoes. To stop once in a while and feel the thread of someone we used to love or be or become, tug gently at the sleeve.
Because we’re still here. You are still here. A little older. Maybe a little softer. Maybe sharper in some places, too. But still capable of wonder. Still able to build something true.
You can still show up for someone when they least expect it. Still send that text, make that call, say that thing you’ve been meaning to say for years. You can make someone feel seen with a story. With a song. With a silence that doesn’t demand to be filled. The world’s noisy, but that just makes the real moments easier to hear when they happen.
So if you’ve drifted from someone you miss—reach out. Not to fix anything. Just to say “Hey, I remember.” If someone drifts into your mind out of nowhere—trust it. Maybe you’re the reminder they didn’t know they needed. Maybe they’re the reminder you’ve been waiting for.
And if nobody comes back? That’s okay too. You’re allowed to move forward without guilt. Allowed to grow without dragging every story behind you like a carry-on full of “what ifs.” You can love who someone was without needing them in your life now. You can miss them and still be okay.
Because here’s the secret they don’t tell you: nostalgia isn’t about going back. It’s about knowing where you came from—so you can walk forward with your feet on solid ground. So you don’t forget the sound of laughter before life got complicated. So you can teach your kids what connection really looks like. Feels like. Sounds like when two people laugh at the same dumb joke they’ve been telling for 30 years.
And maybe that’s the point of all this. Not to mourn the past. Not even to celebrate it. But to use it—to build a life full of things worth remembering. Not someday. Now.
You’re still writing your story. Don’t forget to include yourself.
Afterword: Transmission from Earth
To the ones lost to space—
Adam. AJ. Alan. Alison. Alistair. Brigitte. Bruno. Chris. Christine. Christine. Derek. Duane. Eric. Gary. Gary. Goldstein. Guy. Heather. Honor. Ian. Jeff. Jennifer. Jimmy. Joanne. John. Karen. Ken. Kenny. Kevin. Kim. Kim. Kyle. Lisa. Lori. Louise. Lucia. Mark. Marc. Marilyn. Michelle. Mike. Mikey. Nick. Pam. Paul. Randall. Rainer. Rehan. Richard. Richie. Rob. Robert. Roy. Sandeep. Shawn. Shelly. Simon. “Special K.” Steve. Suzanne. Wayne. Wendy. Wes. Zed. Even Helen (my very first nemesis). You were part of the story. You were my story, for a time.
Maybe you remember me. Maybe you don’t. Maybe the details are fuzzy now, like an old Polaroid that never fully developed. That’s okay. I remember you. I remember bikes and Atari and bad jokes and good music. I remember summer nights that felt like forever, and fall mornings when everything started to change.
Some of you drifted. Some of you ghosted. Some of you just moved on, like people do. No hard feelings. No lingering bitterness. Just… silence. Radio static. An unanswered ping across the decades.
But you mattered. You mattered then, and in some weird, quantum way, you still do now. You helped shape the kid I was and the man I became. You’re woven into this whole damn mixtape—even if you never flipped it over to hear Side B.
So wherever you are—whether you’re thriving, struggling, reinventing, or just quietly existing—I hope life’s been kind to you. I hope you’ve found your rhythm, your people, your place.
And if this message somehow makes it back to you after all these years?
Know that for a while… you were everything.
Ground control out.
Epilogue: For the Ones Who Didn’t Make It
Some people drift. Some disappear. And some are taken before the story even finishes writing itself.
This isn’t just about nostalgia. It’s about honoring what’s gone. A friend who slipped away quietly, not in distance but in spirit. A connection that flickered out too soon, taken by tragedy no one saw coming. A voice that should’ve echoed longer, whose absence still thunders in the quiet.
They shaped the way I see the world. Their laughter still lives in the corners of old conversations. Their fingerprints are on the pages of my memory, smudged but unmistakable.
So I write for them, too.
Not to immortalize. Not to explain.
Just to remember.
END
I remember…😊