Walking in the Forest After Having a Nightmare?

I can recount this because it is funny to me now but it was anything but funny then.

Have you ever woken up in the middle of a dream thinking you were dying soon? This isn't a pretty picture but this is what happened to me.

The Dream: I was following a friend of mine who said he was a nurse but when I followed him in the dream he didn't go to a hospital but into an apartment, an older apartment. When I found out where he was I looked through the screen door and he was preparing medicines for an old woman he was taking care of. She was complaining in somewhat senile dementia fashion about the TV program she was watching----(and then I woke up and thought it meant for some strange reason that I was dying. I couldn't shake my feelings of deep malaise so I finally psyched up and drove my dogs to the forest to take a walk. There the foggy clouds had parted and it was sunny but I found myself crying as I walked alone with my dogs. I was saying, "It's Sunny out! and I miss my son!" I kept repeating this (no one was around but my dogs) so I could do this alone in the forest without worrying about any consequences. This felt sort of crazy to be doing this but soon it was cathartic and my blood started moving from walking and I began to feel better so I put a leash on my older 14 year old dog who is a long hair German Shepard and Australian Shepard mix so I could get him to go a little faster for a longer walk. I found myself a little short of breath too. So, we stopped as we walked uphill on the fire road in the shade as it was getting a little warm for the 3 of us (me and two dogs). We did a long loop and I realized I had left my cellphone home. I decided I just needed to do a longer walk because I hadn't felt right since returning from our vacation north into Canada. So, I was pushing myself and my older dog to keep us both healthy and alive the rest of this year.

But later, I asked my wife about this dream and told it to her and she said the nurse was my son (he does have a BS in Nursing and the old lady I heard was my mother who died of Senile Dementia in 2008.

Somehow I felt better after he saying this to me and then my daughter wanted to drive me to a mall to get birthday presents for her mother which we did.

Now thinking about all this I can laugh but it wasn't funny at all this morning as subconsciously I thought I might be dying. Just for the record "laughing is a whole lot better than dying".

Later: This now makes even more sense. The single worst thing I have ever been through in my life was losing (from 2001 to 2008) my mother slowly to senile dementia which is a fatal disease like Alzheimers. There is no coming back from either of these diseases. And watching your loved one or friend slowly devolve into childhood while forgetting your name as well as all normal psychological boundaries is horrific to the point of driving relatives crazy with them dying too, if they don't keep enough separation to stay sane from the dying friend or parent.

The most important thing to know about this process is: "Life is for the Living!" In order for you to survive the slow loss of your loved one you must focus on saving your own life and the lives of your family who aren't dying. Otherwise you will be lost either psychologically or physically yourselves.

So, just remember "Life is for the Living." People who are dying cannot be your focus unless you want to be dead too (if they are lovers or significant others or mothers, father's etc.) People around the world often go down and die along with their loved ones worldwide if they have no one else to keep them alive and sane. So remember, "Life is for the Living." Everyone else who is dying in some ways is already gone." I know this is hard but this is also life as it really is.