[richardjdare]

There's a good book on these kinds of dreams from a Jungian point of view: "On Dreams and Death: A Jungian Interpretation" by Marie-Louise Von Franz. It can be hard going though, as it is a book about death. The Jungian perspective is that dreams are a meaningful natural phenomenon, and the unconscious seems to know about death and expects to continue on in some other form.

Personally, I have these kinds of dreams about other people. I usually have a very particular type of dream, or series of dreams when somebody is going to die, or has died. It doesn't comfort me as much as it should. Death is still death.

It's like, "The universe is arbitrary and silent most of the time, but when we take someone from you, we want you to know that we really mean it."