Embalmer
A worker who prepares the dead for burial — a figure who handles the body in the space between death and the ground.
An embalmer in a dream is the dream's image of a worker who handles the body in the space between death and the ground. The embalmer's work is not comfort to the dead and not surgery; the work is the respectful preparation of what is no longer alive so that the people who loved it can see it one more time without horror. The dream brings the embalmer when something in your life — the period after a relationship ends, the careful writing-up of a project that has died, the time between a death and the funeral — is being held by a figure whose work is to prepare what is over for its last public showing. An embalmer working with care and discretion is the dream affirming the right attention to the in-between time. An embalmer absent, the body left unprepared, is the dream noting that the careful work of the after has been skipped, and the people who needed the last respectful look will not get one.