["The table that shrank": the food perspective of mothers who have lost children].

This article describes the relationship of bereaved mothers with eating habits, based on the existential phenomenology considering that the family food space, led by the matriarch, can be disturbed due to the loss of a child. Interviews were conducted with fifteen women attending non-governmental bereavement support groups, aged between 40 and 61 years of age. Based on the analysis of the interviews, four thematic categories emerged revealing how grieving mothers behave: loss of appetite and pleasure in eating food; the action of sharing meals versus maternal mourning; the confrontation with the "empty chair"; and reactions due to the culinary act that symbolizes the memory of the child.