Dream:
A small group of us were gathered together at a small grassy area enclosed by clusters of pine trees and short bushes. Our mood was melancholic and quiet. We were about to leave this spot when I finally realized it was a cemetery. I could see dark standing stones in regular rows between groups of trees, and there were several mourning doves perched on the branches. My realization must have been our cue to leave and our pace quickened, back to
someone's apartment on foot.
Something wasn't right at the apartment. A recording was playing at the intercom stating that the doors to all the units were now unlocked and the answering machine codes were reset to "3-2-1" because of the incident that occurred recently, and that anyone would basically be free to snoop around other people's homes.
Someone in our group interpreted this as instructions rather than a warning, and as a group, we went into other people's apartments. Some people were home, while others weren't.
There was an old man who looked sad and upset about something. He was wearing a custodian's jumpsuit and I realized he worked for the landlord. We made our way into the garbage incineration chamber, and the old man grew even more uncomfortable in our presence.
This incineration chamber was actually mostly outdoors on a raised platform. There was a lift and a crane on the platform for moving large amounts of garbage. Out of curiosity I climbed up to the operating platform, and the old man became furious and began to climb up after me. Nearly in a panic I must have bumped the controls and the crane began to lose control. There was an old antique camera sitting on the control panel and it was sliding around, threatening to slip and plummet to the ground far below.
I took up the camera and as the old man reached the outside of my platform, looking more than upset he swung an angry hand at me, but I handed him the camera and told him to "save the camera, not me!" At first he appeared a little confused, but he did save the old camera.
I managed to climb back down, after which I was shown memories of the past... it was through my compassion that the camera showed me events from decades ago, as if by magic: the old man was not old, and he was beside his best friend. This was the man who was no longer alive - who had passed away recently.
The old man then showed us the way into a smaller incineration chamber, which was not active at the moment. I then saw why he was so sad. Dozens of letters were sitting in the incinerator bins waiting to be burned, and they were old personal letters between the two friends. It was the old man's job to operate the incinerator, and the landlord had ordered the personal possessions of the deceased to be burned.
The old man was obligated to do his job at any cost, even if it meant the loss of these most sentimental artifacts. He was suffering so much to sacrifice the memory of his late friend, and I wanted to do something to help him, but anything of the sort would have destroyed the function and purpose of the old man. Those letters absolutely had to be incinerated. I left the room just as the old man activated the incineration machinery.
We moved on and were walking down a road with no traffic. An elderly woman among us was the wife of the man who died. In front of me, she turned to another person and said "I know what I have to do," and she raised a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. She wanted to join her husband.
