Becoming an End-of-Life Companion, Part 12: The Extraordinary

We recently spent another weekend together, this time talking about those moments in life that are hard to put into words, moments and experiences you can't fully explain through logic alone, where something feels like magic, something beyond this world, or maybe just a beautiful coincidence.

The hospice I'm now part of isn't affiliated with any particular religion or spiritual practice. Even though that was exactly what I'd been looking for, I was genuinely curious how a hospice like this bridges the gap between the material world we live in and the great mystery of life and death. It didn't take long to understand: this doesn't mean there's no room for religion, faith, or spirituality. Quite the opposite. What matters is what the dying person wants and needs, not what we bring into the room. A dying person doesn't need salvation or some last-minute enlightenment, at least not from us.

Over the weekend, we were guided through several exercises of exploration, invited to stay curious, and encouraged to go on a deeper journey of reconnection and reflection.

Below is a painting I made during one of these exercises. We were asked to find a creative way to express one of those magical moments we'd experienced, one we struggled to put into words. I chose an experience I'd had in an altered state of consciousness. The paper is folded so the upper half lies over the lower half, hiding it like a grey veil. But there's a small cutout, through which you can glimpse a tiny part of what's drawn underneath. Unfold the paper, remove the grey veil, and you see there's far more drawn on the lower half than the cutout ever revealed. The different colors represent different emotions, and the red lines represent different narratives I hold about myself and the world around me. With the grey veil in place, the painting represents my ordinary state of consciousness, aware of only a tiny fraction of all the information and emotion stored in my body, along with a few fragmented stories I've built about myself and the world. With the veil removed, the full image represents my altered state of consciousness, one in which I had access to far more, and understood that the narratives I'd created weren't separate from each other, but connected.

It was a beautiful moment, reconnecting with something deeply meaningful in my life, and listening to the equally moving stories of my fellow trainees.