"I don't feel any pain when I am painting," said the old woman. She started painting with the encouragement of art therapist Lu Su-chen. Lu saw that the old woman missed her children, so she suggested that she could paint cards and send them to her children. From that moment on, the old woman never stopped painting. When there was not enough drawing paper, she would even draw on old newspapers or calendars.

Lu said, "Can you tell me what you are painting?… I notice there are so many colors here… I notice there are people here, there are…" Lu uses a patient's creations and the willingness to share his or her thoughts as a way to start a conversation, and then she gradually guides the patient into the process of art therapy.

The old woman never stopped painting. She painted people singing, dancing or looking at flowers, and children with skin disease bathing in a pond. She painted a doctor treating her for a stomachache. She pasted her paintings on the walls of her ward. She painted snakesore and more, bigger and bigger. She used to work in the mountains, where she often ran into snakes. Sometimes she would be frightened by especially large snakes and she would run back home.

"Most people do not understand the feeling of isolation and the agony of facing death," said Lu. "Talking to someone may be hard for patients, but creating art works can give them the security to use conversation and story-telling to express their inner feelings."

Lu observed that art therapy, which combines both art and psychotherapy, can be a bridge between a patient's inner world and the outside. Art therapy can help patients to let out their tangled, confused emotions and forget their pain.

The lost kangaroo mother

A man was with his wife in the hospital. There was not much he could do besides stay with her every day, so Lu invited him to paint.

He painted mountains and scenes from his hometown. He also painted a mother kangaroo bringing a baby kangaroo to a hospital. Lost in the mountains, the mother kangaroo became nervous and started to cry. The husband named the painting, "Where Is Help?"

"What is this?" asked Lu, pointing at the painting.

"This is the kangaroo mother's binoculars." The husband explained the story to Lu.

"I could tell that this was a special painting that reflected the inner world of his mind," Lu later said. "When a man takes care of his sick wife, he feels helpless and doesn't know what to do. A woman may cry or express her feelings, but a man tends to remain silent. He can better express his feelings through painting."

With the husband's consent, Lu pasted this and other paintings on the wall. Many people asked the husband about the painting. Two days later, he suddenly asked Lu to take it down.

"At first he was quite happy about the painting, but later he asked me to take it down. He changed his mind because he realized that the painting was not only a story, but also the reflection of his true inner self. Since the painting was such a private matter, he didn't want other people to see it."

Two days later, his wife passed away. While waiting for other relatives to arrive for the funeral, he sat helplessly and wept. Lu was also there with him, and she said, "Why don't you draw something? It'll make the time go by faster."

"I am in so much pain," the husband replied. "I don't know what to draw."

"I want to know what happened to the mother kangaroo. Why don't you paint the ending for me?"

The man took up crayons and immediately went to work with his fingers, pouring out his feelings onto the paper. With one crayon after another, he kept drawing. As his breathing became more regular, his drawing became more refined. Two hours flew by and the story of the mother kangaroo and her baby reached its conclusion.

The kangaroo mother, holding a beautiful umbrella, had finally found the way to the hospital. After seeing the doctor, the little kangaroo recovered and they went home happily.

"What he painted was not the same as the reality, because his wife, symbolized by the little kangaroo, was dead," remarked Lu. "However, the kangaroo mother didn't go back home on the same road where she had gotten lost before. We can tell from this that this husband's grief is not excessive and we don't need to worry too much about him. In art therapy, a painting can be an evaluation of a person's grief."

"This is my whole life."

"When they look back on their lives, some cancer patients feel that they have done nothing special. This makes them worry that once they die, everyone will forget about them. Hence, they don't know how to face death. In reality, every person leaves a mark in this world, even if they don't realize it. Through their artistic creations, we help patients to review their lives, and most importantly to search for the meaning and value of their lives.

Because her family didn't want to visit her, one patient loudly expressed her negative emotions such as anger, loneliness, regret and anxiety. She had been through several failed marriages, and so she felt that her past life had been nothing but a mess.

Lu asked her to create a collage by cutting and pasting pieces of other pictures. Among all the photographs, the one she chose was of a mother and a baby. She said, "This is my whole life." The most valuable part of her life that she wanted to share with others was being a mother.

Through her art, she finally came to understand what she wantedhe hoped that her daughter would come to visit her once a week, and that the visit should have some quality.

"After that, whenever her daughter came to see her, they would create something together," Lu said. "Even if they didn't talk, they would sit together and create some art work. At that moment, they were together as one." Later, even relatives who lived quite far away would come to see her. With the care of the nursing staff, her anger, anxiety and fear slowly disappeared and she started to react positively to her surroundings.

Unfinished bridge

"This is my turf, so please don't put your stuff here," said a young male patient. He wiped the tabletop with his hands and sat down together with Lu to make some pottery. Two hours later he got up, pointed to the empty table and said, "This is my product cow ate all the grass and now the cow is gone."

He was kind of cool, but he also had a good sense of humor. After getting to know him better, Lu found out that he really missed his dog. As Lu talked with him about his dog, she made a clay figure of the dog according to his description.

"Are her ears standing up or drooping?"
"Is she sitting or lying down? How about the tail?"
"Look! Here's your dog!"
The patient had a wonderful smile.

After that, he made a shoe rack for slippers and he painted a tree and a bird. His last painting was titled "Bridge." He did the painting quite well, but he never finished painting the bridge.

"The art works of dying patients tend to have bridges, roads or rivers," Lu observed. "These symbolize a connection between this world and the afterlife. In their subconscious minds, patients know their bodies are vehicles, like cars or ships, that take them through this human world." Since cancer patients are sensitive to their physical bodies, they have the right to know the conditions of their illnesses. Family members should not give in to their own fear and helplessness and hide information from the patients. This only makes the patients worry even more.

Fallen Apollo

Art therapy is helpful not only for cancer patients, but also for medical workers in the palliative care ward to release their emotions and to develop team unity. Constantly facing the loss of life and the process of taking care of patients, medical personnel often feel lost or angry. Sometimes, their ideologies or ideas are in conflict with each other. At such times, art therapy is helpful to the teams.

One day, Lu had staff members use pottery to express their images of a patient who had just died. "While making their pottery figures, the medical people all focus their minds on this patient. At that moment, their minds are united and that can help channel their emotions."

One person made an ashtray and a hand holding a cigarette, because that patient had been a heavy smoker. One molded a man's torso, because the patient had always sat up straight in his wheelchair to show off his manliness. A nurse made a pair of eyes, because the patient's eyes had made a deep impression on people.

Dr. Chiu Chao-jung made a deformed human being in a wheelchair. She said the patient had given her the impression of a warrior with a strong life force, but at the same time she had also felt the patient's unspeakable agony. Hence, Dr. Chiu named this piece "Fallen Apollo" for the fearless sun god who always rode a fiery chariot from east to west.