Distance

Most of my dearest friends do not have any children, all with their own particular stories and reasons.I say this because it is a rather interesting factoid to me.I guess I was thinking about this as Mother's Day approaches. I do have a wonderful Goddaughter and Godson, but I sometimes wonder if my close friends would have asked me to be a godmother if they had had children. I see being a godmother as more than a symbolic gesture. I try to keep up with Matthew's and Lexxi's lives and love them very much, just as I would with my beloved nieces and nephews. Not seeing my nieces, nephews and godchildren grow up, because they live in Michigan and I live in Georgia, is one of the biggest heartaches for me.I love being an aunt and a godmother, and when I lived in Michigan I tried to be a caring and involved person in their lives; I felt a close bond with them.Now, almost all of them have children of their own, and I only see the latest generation when I get up to Michigan. They don't really know me,and that makes me sad. All this makes me think about my own children. We don't have family or their godparents in Georgia. They have really missed out on the abundant , extravagant love of family, get togethers, holidays and the intimacy of all that, which Al and I both experienced when we were young.I think about my own aunts and uncles who moved away when I was young and how I really lost close contact with them except for my Uncle Ronald and Uncle Burnis.I feel that loss, too, now that I'm gone from Michigan, with my dear Aunt Katie and Aunt Barbara. Physical distance is so hard on relationships. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say, but absence also has the sometimes, unforeseen consequences of unwanted broken connections.It's one thing to consciously end a relationship and get space; it's another when emotional closeness is compromised by living far away from someone with whom you truly want to stay connected.Some of my dearest family and friends have never or rarely visited me in GA, and we will have lived here 20 years this October. I can come up with many before -and -afters in my life. When it comes to my circle of friends and family, it's the before and after I moved from Michigan. That makes me sigh.