The friend who moves away leaves an empty place in errands as well as celebrations.

When someone moves away, you lose them from the ordinary as well as the significant. The big occasions can be preserved by effort; the incidental company, the errand done together, the unplanned hour cannot, and that is usually where the friendship actually lived. Distance takes the small things first.

So when you are the one who moved, build in a substitute for the incidental: a regular call about nothing, shared routines at a distance, the kind of contact that is not an event. It feels insufficient compared to what it replaces. It is also the part that keeps a friendship from becoming a series of updates.