A friend asked me this week if we should mourn friends we're never going to see again--even though they aren't actually dead. Friends who are, basically, dead to us personally.

I said realizing we're never going to see them again is the end of the mourning process. We have come to accept the outcome of the friendship (it's over), and so all the time after they left our lives until the moment we realize they are gone forever is actually our mourning period.

My reasoning (although this is a bit revisionist--after I gave the answer, I started to think about why I answered this way) is we're different people now. Years after being close to people--in some cases, living with them--we went in different directions. Everyone grows up--or at least grows different--from who we were before. Experiences, other relationships, the world, jobs, everything makes us think and act different. Time makes us look different. Ten years of not keeping up with someone makes the gap between those who called each other friends very hard to jump across.

But those people we see or talk to occasionally do not have to jump such a large pond. Our change is much less drastic because it's incremental in the space of our lives.

It's not just friends--it's family, too.

I've told many friends who have to deal with their parents's views on many of their actions that they have to divorce their parents. They have to change from being their child to being a friend.

Parents will tell their children what to do until the long-standing family relationship paradigm is broken, dissolved and built back up again. Friends will listen, give words of encouragement and advice, but it's not an order. It's not do this or you're grounded. We give our friends latitude and allow them to fail, if that's what they choose to do. Parents want so much (too much in many cases) to protect and guide their children, they'll push them hard in a direction--even if the direction is not in the best interest of their child.

As a man (if only by age, but I like to think I'm a man in other ways, too), I'm not the same person my parents' struggled to mold and guide. When I was done listening to them (before they wanted to let me go and, of course, after I wanted out), I stopped paying attention to the rules and histrionics. Eventually, we came to a new understanding.

So what to do with the woman in Florida who's been basically dead to the world for fifteen or so years? Who's to say what should happen to this woman? Both the husband and the parents feel they have the final say. What I do know is the rest of us have no say about this.

I don't understand why this is the most important news story in the nation right now.

Last week another kid shot up his school and then himself. It barely made the nation page in my newspaper. Years after Columbine and we don't care anymore. Kids are messed up, we can't change that, right?

An oil refinery in Texas blew up last week, killing at least 15 people. It got a little more press than the school shooting, but it's a piss in the corner compared to the Florida woman and her feeding tube.

We're into the third year of the War in Iraq. Over 1500 Americans have died. Thousands of Iraqis (civilians and militants) have died. Violence happens there every day. People die violently in Iraq every day. But this one woman in Florida--this is all we want to talk about.

Everyone's hiring lawyers to draw up living wills. It's almost like when Ashcroft told everyone to buy duct tape and plastic sheeting to "protect" ourselves against chemical and nuclear radiation from "dirty bombs." Duck and cover. This time it's lawyers who are benefiting from the latest national "crisis." A living will won't protect you from what's happening in Florida. It will, at best, give one side a better argument in a court case. Even more money for lawyers.

And so I go back to my friend's question. Should we morn friends who aren't actually dead, but dead to us? Should we pull that emotional feeding tube?

My amended answer is yes. Say, "it was nice knowing you (insert friend's name here), but I gotta move on." Down a shot (even if you don't drink--down a shot).

Then you can get on with caring about the friends who can still have a drink with you.

Matt Worley has mourned the loss of friends, both dead and still living, but sometimes he Googles the living ones out of curiosity.