ABSTRACT
When confronting death, a person often responds with a profound search for wholeness, healing life’s wounds and making peace with the world. The arts are a vehicle for self-expression and, therefore, a significant tool for transformation during the dying process. The arts assist patients, families, and staff to understand the whole of their own lives, as well as the profound journey toward death that they share. In this way, the arts uniquely fit the mission of hospice care, which is to assist terminally ill patients and their families to maintain the highest quality of life as long as life lasts.
