Dreams of Death and Dying

In my posts, I have started to focus more on symbols in dreams because dreams are normally not literal, with a few exceptions that I will discuss in later posts. Dreams of death can provide good examples of this. If you have a dream in which you die or a loved one is dying, you are likely to very fearful and suffer anguish. If the dream is about you, it does not mean you need to rush off and get your affairs in order, unless you are in failing health. More likely, the dream means that you are dying to something, perhaps the old. Your life may be undergoing a transformation that is symbolized by your death in a dream. The same applies to another person. Once I had a dream in which my mother was in a coffin being lowered into the grave. This dream did not mean my mother was about to die; in fact, she lived a great many more years. It did mean that something, which my mother symbolized, had died and been laid to rest. That something in this case was her love of sweets that were in abundance during my years growing up. My mother was a cook and we always had pies and cakes in the house. I had recently changed my diet and gave up all sweets in the form of snacks and deserts.

So how is someone’s actual death shown in a dream? There are probably many different ways, but I have experienced a couple of the common ones. In one dream, I saw an image of a woman I knew and then the hands of a clock that moved a short distance and stopped. I instinctively knew it was an indication that she would not live much longer. At the time, she appeared healthy, but a few months later she was diagnosed with a cancer that took her life quite quickly. When my mother’s health began to fail due to her advanced age, one night I had a dream in which I saw my mother coming out of a small room. As she passed me she said, I so glad to not have those restrictions anymore. She passed over a few days later.

Others have described dreams of a boat crossing a river as representative of a physical passing. And there are still other ways. I once dreamed about a man I had worked with for many years. His health failed and he was in hospice. One night I dreamed that that I was on a train seated across from him and another man. They did not appear to see me. He told the other man when and where he was born, and the other man then did the same. Both seemed to realize they had passed and were moving on. The next day I learned that he had died.