Reflect: Staying Connected to Your Friends

"I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends."

These days, we have more opportunity than ever to stay in touch with people- phone, text, email, social media. It’s fun to find old friends online somehow and ‘see’ all that they’ve been up to. Maybe we reach out, get a reply, and then have a little back-and-forth. Or maybe we even have a long phone conversation or meet up in person (gasp!). The quantity and quality of friends we have change throughout the life span. But no matter our age, the truth of the matter is: keeping in touch with people takes work. And yet friendships enrich and bring so much color to our lives. Looking back on the last year, have you stayed connected with your friends as much as you would have liked?

According to hospice nurse Bronnie Ware, a common regret of the dying is…