The American journal of hospice & palliative care
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Health practitioners face many challenges when caring for and communicating with dying persons. As truth-tellers, we search for ways to communicate with honesty, sensitivity, and compassion. Creative use of language is one aspect of caring. ⋯ It allows us to share a truth without the glare of reality. This author contends that metaphor is mysterious, creative, invitational, safe, open to interpretation, respectful and playful. The creative and judicious use of metaphor provides health care practitioners with many veils--veils that shield the dying from the glare of their prognosis, veils particularly valuable and suited in communicating with our palliative patient population.