Nostalgia
The specific sweetness of remembering a former time — affection for what is no longer here, softened by distance.
Nostalgia in a dream is the dream's image of the specific sweetness of remembering a former time. Nostalgia is not the same as grief; nostalgia has the softening of distance, and tends to leave out the hard parts. The dream brings nostalgia when something in your life — a photograph, a piece of music, a place returned to — is producing an affectionate return to what is no longer available. Nostalgia honoured as a small return without being lived in is the dream affirming the right kind of relationship with the past. Nostalgia moved into and inhabited, with the current life going neglected, is the dream noting that the softened memory has become the residence, and the present, which is the only place anything can actually be done, is being abandoned.