»been gone nearly half the decade

Earlier this week: I bumped into a colleague as we were both rushing to and fro in the busy hallways at work: he asked me, briefly, to stop at his desk. When I finally did, he couldn't remember why. And then he cocked his head and asked: "You always carry a camera, don't you?" and said that he wanted a photograph of himself to send to his mother. I obliged, and wondered when he had last seen her. "Oh, about 8 years ago." (According to his mother, who just looked at the photos, it was more than 10!)
In the always-connected circles he and I run in (bluetooth! tri-band! jabber! two-way pagers! macstumbler!), ten years of not seeing someone, not even a photograph, seems an impossibility. I was very very happy to take that photo.