Two Weddings and a Funeral

There is something prophetic about the movie title “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”

In real life, for most of us, it could be one, two, or three occasions. The number is not the import, the import is that’s roughly how often we meet people who once mattered to us.

Old family friends, relations one generation up, neighbours from the homes we grew up in — all exist somewhere in our phones, remembered but unreached. We know their birthdays because Facebook reminds us, and we acknowledge them ‘enthusiastically'  with a cheerful emoji, a quick wish, a sense of obligation fulfilled.

We even find ourselves in their cities sometimes — for work, for weddings, or for a holiday — but rarely do we think of meeting. “Next time,” we tell ourselves, comforted by the thought that their faces are just a click away. The photograph on our feed becomes proof that the relationship is still alive.

Once upon a time, we didn’t need reasons to meet. People simply dropped in. Someone would be passing through the neighbourhood and would stop by for a cup of tea. Families lived in casual proximity…unannounced visits, shared snacks, idle gossip that lasted hours. Relationships were maintained by accident, not by effort.

Today, even intimacy needs an invitation. The calendar decides when affection is appropriate. Weddings, milestone birthdays, and funerals are our socially sanctioned reunions. We see the same faces at these occasions, all smiling with the same surprise: “So good to see you after so long!” The joy is genuine, the nostalgia warm — but beneath it is an unspoken truth: we don’t meet unless life forces us to.

Technology has softened the guilt of absence. Social media has replaced physical visits with digital gestures like, likes, heart emojis, and “thinking of you” messages that require no real thought. The algorithm remembers our relationships for us; we only have to react.

Perhaps it’s not lack of love that keeps us apart but the efficiency of modern connection. We have built systems that let us care without showing up. Emotional outsourcing, disguised as convenience.

In some ways, it mirrors our times perfectly. We no longer cook; we order. We no longer write; we forward. We no longer visit; we “stay in touch.” The effort once needed to sustain relationships has been redesigned out of our lives. The friction that created warmth has been replaced by the smoothness of convenience.

And so, we continue to gather at weddings and funerals, on occasions large enough to demand attendance, dramatic enough to remind us of the lives we share but rarely inhabit. We hug, we promise to meet again soon, we mean it in that moment — and then, life slides quietly back into its scheduled flow.

Perhaps that’s the new rhythm of connection — a series of highlights stitched together by silence. And maybe that’s what growing up now means: learning to live with people we love, mostly in memory.