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Based on research on the effects of the impossible work of bereavement in a nursing home type institution, this article reports on the weight of death, the fantasies and representations it generates, in the intersubjective exchanges that unfold between professionals and residents. An analog link between the problems associated with old ages, the production of specific fantasies, the emergence of serious facts of mistreatment towards the subjects welcomed, the representations of the elderly, the spectrum of death and the implementation of defensive mechanisms on the part of caregivers come to detrimentally alter the establishment of a care concern and “institutional parenthood”, in other words, the parental role that institutions exercise on its professionals and residents.