Some background:
Have ex-friend who I've known for many, many years (since schooldays).
Remained solid friends for about 25 years after leaving school.
Started to go wrong when we hit early 40s when my ex-friend started becoming fairly unpleasant and dis-respectful towards me.
Took me a while to twig to the dis-respectful behaviour (about 10 years!).
Decided to call it a day on the friendship when I realised that - when in her company - I was always very tense waiting for the next unpleasant / disrespectful comment.
So gradually withdrew from the friendship about 5 years ago.
No arguments of any kind (something I wanted to avoid as we have several mutual friends and did not want to make life difficult for them).
I just gradually reduced and then stopped making contact.
Following this - there was zero response from my ex-friend.
I.e. zero calls / emails to say "where are you?", "missing you?", "what are you up to?", "why haven't you been in touch?".
So I've always assumed that the old friendship was also not working for my ex-friend and worked better for both of us to be occasional aquaintances.
Cut to March last year:
Ex-friend emailed me out of the blue to let me know that she had been diagnosed in January 2014 - very suddenly and unexpectedly - with a serious illness for which she was getting urgent treatment.
- I rang her on the evening of getting the email to check how she was.
- I then rang her 3 - 4 weeks later (in April) to see how her treatment was going.
- I then rang her another month later (in May) to see how she was getting on (answer was she was doing well and recovering).
Since then I have not been in further contact.
Over the last few months
I have regularly wondered whether - given the length of time we've known each other, our previous friendship and the seriousness of my ex-friend's illness - should I have been in contact more.
So my question is - AIBU to have not made any further contact with her?