Dealing With Death

I suppose each of us respond to death in different ways. For me (SS) one of the manifestation is in my dreams. For about a year after my father died, I had a recurring dream of being stalked by a great white shark. The dream would take many different forms, but it usually involved ending up in deep gray water, often from a location that should not necessarily have had water associated with it, and then trying to escape while this shark mercilessly hunted me. The dream would end with me waking up in the middle of the night and my heart pounding.

A few nights ago the shark dreams returned, only but in a different form. Here I was in the water with several others after our boat had capsized, and the shark was not hunting me but another. In this dream we were trying to get to somewhere we could get out of the water and the shark was going past me as it homed in on this other person. In my dream I was pushing against the side of the shark trying get it to turn away but it was relentless. After it passed me, I found that there was a reef near to us that we could get out of the water and danger and I was screaming to this other person to climb up on to it, but he couldn't, and then the shark attacked him and tore him to bloody pieces in front of us. I woke up with my heart pounding. It didn't take me very much reflection to recognize that this dream was a response to the sudden death of my division chief, a good friend, mentor, and leader a few weeks ago.