The present paper presents the results of a study carried out during oncologic clinical practices as a nurse, with the objective of analysing the role of patient care after the patient has died. It is based on experiences gathered during the practice, which supposes a contribution for the discipline of nursing. For the analysis of this theory the hierarchic structure of knowledge in nursing is revisited, and from meta-paradigms we move onto philosophy and from this onto meta-paradigmatic concepts, to conclude by analysing the patters of knowledge the situation reflects. The model which directs the guidelines used is the conceptual model of nursing as care, presented by Boykin and Schoenhofer. The guidelines were used for the analysis of nursing situations developed by the Care for Chronic Patients and their Families Group of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, which allowed us to include the narrative of an experience lived by the author in her practise at the National Institute for Cancer Research (ESE) in order to identify the theoretical-conceptual components of transcendent care. The situation analysed reflects a nursing care that can be catalogued as a nursing situation, where the meta-paradigmatic concepts of the professional discipline, the philosophical view of reciprocity, and the knowledge required by transcendent care can be identified. Epistemological and ontological analysis of the care experience lived in the nursing situation with a middle-aged woman in the final stage of her life, allowed the nurse to see past her daily clinical routine and understand how, by identifying the different elements that clarify the dimensions and possibilities enclosed in nursing, viewed as care, it is possible to transcend and to create better tools for qualifying our own practise and that of our colleagues.