Distance asks people to describe changes that nearby company would simply witness.

Being near someone means most things do not have to be said. You see the haircut, the new furniture, the mood on a Thursday, and none of it requires an announcement. At a distance, all of that has to be converted into words by the person living it, and much of it never gets converted, because narrating your own life is tiring. What is lost between two people is not affection but witnessing.

Ask about the small things rather than the headlines. What the flat looks like now, what they do on a Sunday, what is annoying them this month. Those questions do the work that presence used to do.