I don't want to sound condescending, but if being forced out of the job means end for your relationships built for years, maybe these relationships weren't built as they should. They should have been built with the people as people, not coworkers, and definitely not using company as the communication ground.
I think there's some stigma with confronting the fact that relationships are just ephemeral. We are social creatures in the sense that we can cooperate with each other on a task laid in front of us, but once that task is done, we mostly tend to drift apart onto the next task with another group of people. And that's okay. We're only weakly social with everyone except our direct family and significant others. The quality of a relationship is in no way measured by how long it endured.
I think this is very true, and with college buddies it's very different from workmates. Because in college, you are with them at classes, but then you hang out with them between classes, then you meet them in cafeteria, then you meet them at a party or in the student club, then you meet them at dormitory etc. All these contexts are different and that helps to build more diverse relationship, which is not focused on a single place.
At work, in my experience I'll meet them in the office and then maybe wave a hand on the way out of the parking lot, if ever.
This is the big thing, work opportunities tend to get people to move whole cities away, and long distance relationships like this tend to not survive.