stay in touch...

We all tend to get carried away in our own lives, tend to get lazy, do only what we want/have to do. things that we need, or things that make us happy. So often do we forget the importance of making the extra effort to stay in touch with friends. Just the ones we talk to very often anyway. Easier to share, when you know they know what happened yesterday or the day before. Iremember years ago I used to call my friends very frequently. I used to find it wierd that friends 'just drift apart'. When they are both friends but niether does enough effort to call, it is always; tomorrow, or ok I will email her or something. I knew I was slipping into that routine. yet, I was postponing as usual doing anything about it.

I have this friend, who had been my friend since, lets say 1992? yeah that would be about right. 15 years. We were together in college, we were best friends. We would study together, spend the night sometimes together, travel together, for short, we were very close.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, a few years ago she got married and a year later travelled with her hubby somewhere for work. so ofcourse contact considerably diminished a bit. but come on... there were always emails, the phone and when she came over.

but of course, emails quickly came down to forwards of jokes and stuff that come my way, with out any personal message.

Till today that is. I just felt like Imissed her all of a sudden, and sent her an email. by chance, just when I was doing that she got on line so I thought a good chance to chat.

Talking to her a little bit, I discovered by the way that she has been having serious trouble in her life for the last 18 months. 18MONTHS and I had not known. When I told her I am so sorry I did not know, she said because you never ask about me anymore.

though Iknow she was half joking, not really scolding me, I realized that Oh my, I haven't really talked to her since maybe 2 years ago when she called me on my birthday. that is too long to just let time slip by without a word. I felt bad, because she told me today to please stay in touch, that she was lonely and missed having her friends.

We are not supposed to wait for a disaster to happen so we can reach out to our friends, especially such old ones. because when/if God forbid something bad does happen, the friendship would have been lost to nothing more that laziness, and we would have lost a very precious thing.