The paper deals with the issue of metaphor as a mechanism of understanding the abstract through the concrete. The author discusses this issue from a theoretical perspective based on a specific linguistic instantiation (in modern Greek language) of the metaphor DEATH IS DEPARTURE ‘(s)he left…’. The theoretical observations are empirically tested through the analysis of psychoanalytic sessions which include discourse of two women in mourning. The theoretical and empirical data support the thesis that metaphor –at least in this case– does not serve cognitive needs, but those of expressivity, since it highlights elements of subjective experience. The paper also emphasises the role of the language in the instantiation of conceptual metaphors, through the contrast of ‘(s)he left…’ with other linguistic expressions of the same conceptual metaphor.