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This paper discusses the experience of two groups of relatives of the disappeared of the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976–1982). It focuses on the problem of violent death, the absence of bodies, and the impact of the exhumations and identifications carried out by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) at a personal and a collective level. On the one hand, we will see how, through a symbolic repertoire, the families of the victims build a specific type of relationship with their loved ones, giving meaning to recent history and identifying themselves as members of a particular social group. On the other hand, we will see how the absence of the body and the symbolic framework of interpretation produce a confrontation with a form of death that I call “unattended death,” which can be transformed by the exhumation and identification of the body.