Part of the series: Loss & Identity Recently I attended the wake of the mother of a close friend I grew up with. Moments like that bring together people who shared pieces of life many years ago but eventually drifted apart. While I was there, I had a brief conversation with a classmate I hadn’t seen in over thirty years. We spoke the way people often do at these gatherings — catching up quickly, reflecting on the past, noticing how much time had passed. During the conversatio