Based on a two-year study of 31 young people aged 14-20 who had lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS, in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, the article draws on an in-depth ethnographic account of a 17-year-old girl's life process. It traces forms of care between adults and children within her family across several generations, exploring how social repertoires and forms of ritual pre-dating the HIV/AIDS epidemic are brought to bear on relationships compromised through death, dispersal and disappearance. Temporalities in relation to loss, the reconfiguration of the past and of imagined possible futures emerge from the account. (Contains 2 notes.)