My closest friend from college moved abroad for a job opportunity about eight months ago, and even though we both knew the move was coming for almost half a year in advance, I somehow never managed to actually sit down with her properly before she left. There was a small farewell dinner with a larger group, but that is not really the same as the kind of real conversation I had been quietly planning to have with her at some point during those months.
Work got busier than usual right around the same weeks she was preparing to leave, packing, closing bank accounts, sorting visa paperwork on her side, and somehow every time I thought about proposing we meet just the two of us, something on my end felt slightly more urgent in the moment and I kept telling myself there would be another weekend before she actually left the country for good.
We still talk fairly regularly now, video calls every couple of weeks, occasional messages in between, and the friendship itself does not feel broken in any real sense. But there is a specific kind of ending I keep feeling like I missed out on, one real conversation acknowledging that an entire chapter of both our lives, the one where we lived in the same city and could meet whenever either of us wanted, was actually closing for good.
I have thought about bringing this up directly with her now, telling her honestly that I feel like we never got the goodbye conversation we probably should have had before she left, but it feels a little strange to raise it this many months after the fact, like reopening something that has technically already passed.
Has anyone else felt this specific kind of delayed regret with a friend who moved away, and did actually naming it later, even after the fact, help at all, or does it just stay as one of those things you quietly carry?