In this essay, I work with the stories and artwork generated by a small group of visual art therapists who came together in a collective biography workshop. All of the participants, including the author, specialize in end-of-life and palliative art therapy. As a collective, we worked to bring our experiences back to our bodies through stories, art-making, and writing, to explore how working with people in the last days, weeks, or months of their lives affects us. In this essay I ask: What happens when stories paint pictures, and when pictures paint stories, to make visible our experiences of death, vulnerability, and love—experiences that might otherwise have been impossible to know?

Life is a journey, death is the final frontier. These are clichés, yet the metaphorical language they draw upon is worth attending to when we encounter them. Movement is present whether we find ourselves at the bedside of a dying loved one or are confronted with managing our own grief in the wake of a death. This essay uses the text Gone from My Sight as a road map for thinking about migration in dying and argues that rather than dismiss language about travel or visitors, it should be taken seriously when one is with the dying or those experiencing grief.