Life's on Hold

Intimate relationships are forged on and sustained by the appreciation of mutually significant events. When someone is missing, as a result of a reportedly unmotivated absence, expectations of the continuity of relationships are disrupted. Using data from publicly available texts I examine how people experience such an absence. Harvey Sacks’s notion of the ‘private calendar’ helps explicate how remaining family members experience literal and figurative desynchronization that suggests missing might be more potently understood as waiting. Finally, it seems that the duration of the absence helps family members account for the enduring lack of communication.