Some Melancholic Musings About the Slow Intimacy of Grief: ‘(M)y Story Always Arrives Late’

In this article I argue that while intimacy has to do with getting to know the other and showing what you know, the acknowledgment of not knowing and the insistence on forever wondering about the other, their impact on you, and your connection with them, is crucial. Intimacy then is about continuous processes of paying attention and getting to know as there always is more to know. This knowing may be impossible to show. I argue that during the process of grieving the elegy is an example of showing the not-knowing. I discuss this argument by presenting three individual elegies. In a postscript, the work of Judith Butler and Diana Fuss is used to argue that as social scientists, our work is to write elegies for the so-called ungrievables, those who typically are not known and not shown.