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3 ways to respond when a close friendship ends abruptly

One of the most hurtful experiences any of us can have is when a wonderful friend suddenly disappears from our lives. It's a jolt and it's very painful.
This situation is one I have run across frequently in my mediation and counselling practice. I have found three different ways of responding to it and thinking about it:
One: acceptance
Life is a Brownian motion of human beings, where we are always in constant process, connecting, disconnecting, reconnecting, caught up in an endless whirl of mutation and flux. In addition, all of our lives are filled with mystery and mysteries. Sometimes events dramatically reveal just how mysterious our lives really are. The deaths, by their own hands, of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain are perplexing examples.
Both were wealthy, accomplished, successful, world famous, attractive, charismatic, and were both loved and admired by universes of fans. Yet they both found their lives so painful that they chose to end them. Why?
It is an incomprehensible mystery.
So, why is it that sometimes 'Best Fiends Forever' suddenly aren't? The real answer may be that some things just don't make sense and can't really be explained. We just have to accept them.
Two: A pro-active repair strategy
Strategy two is the complete opposite. It is to repair the rift. Here are the steps:
1-Communicate verbally or by phone, if possible. If not, send a card or a letter. This is the message to communicate (in your own words.) "We used to be very close. But then something happened and now we're not."
2- "I'm not sure what it was that happened. And whatever it was that happened, may have been my fault!"
3-"If whatever it was that happened was my fault, I apologise!"
4-"I would like to start over again and be friends again, because I greatly value your friendship. Could we meet somewhere and have coffee and talk?"
Very simple and, yes, it's hard to do. But it is highly effective.
Three: Understanding the role of identity in friendship
We all have some primary 'identity' - personal, irreducible substrate that in some basic sense defines 'who we are'. But we also have other secondary identities, which may arise organically out of our primary identity, or in various ways, be in tension or conflict with our primary identity. This is where it gets complicated. We are constantly surrounded by other possible identities or ways to live our lives and think about ourselves. Some of those are imposed on us by external agencies (family, society, job). But others are aspirational: things we would like to do, or new ways we would like to live. 
We are often in flux as to what identity most truly represents us. Or which identity could best fulfil who we would really like to be. When a longtime close friendship suddenly disrupts, the disruption may have come about because the other party is negotiating identity change. 
Ironically, it may be that the other person may not be rejecting you. They may in fact be rejecting themselves.
We're complex folks, we humans!
David Evans is a writer and a mediator