I would like to submit this dream to you for discussion. I have very vivid dreams and I dream often. My dreams are usually quirky fun and a little bazaar, but this one was very different and really stands out for me. It was just this month (Feb) that it happened it is as follows.
I was standing at a large lake or most likely an ocean, and was admiring the boats with other people. I remember being very calm and peaceful. I asked the other people in my dream to go on and move away(as not to infect them) and I then I was admitting to myself I had a contagious disease in my chest and I was dying. After they walked away I was suddenly in a time warp situation which felt like the boats were suddenly further out in the distance, but actually it was a physical feeling of myself going warp speed backwards. Now I was in an unfamiliar place at the bottom of a staircase. My chest was hurting and I counted two more shallow painful breaths and knew I was dying and then a real feeling like an energy surrounded me , which I can only describe like a tight long sleeve turtleneck shirt being pulled off me and over my head. I looked up the stairs and there was a very old women with a very wrinkled face and a very small and frail stature (90lbs) looking at me with her arms outstretched to me, inviting an embrace. ( she reminded me like a Mother Theresa figure ) I did not recognize her and still do not know her in my conscious world either. Suddenly I was floating?? or moving towards her, all I new I was heading rapidly to her and had never in my real world or dream world felt a complete and total love and peace that was waiting for me in her arms. She had a smile on her face and as I went to her it felt so right. I physically had no more pain in my chest either. Then I woke up. was actually shallow breathing, my chest hurt and I felt totally aware of the feeling I just experienced with this old woman. All I can say, as my day at work went on, I was deeply thinking and still am about this dream . All I can described the feeling of death and this old woman's love and welcoming arms was a feeling of Nirvana
2. nirvana - any place of complete bliss and delight and peace
Any opinions about this dream would be welcomed, like I said before I usually have light and quirky fun dreams and know the people in them. This was the most intense dream I have ever had.

If the shallow breathing and chest pain you experienced when you woke up were not an isolated experience - and, perhaps, even if they were - get yourself to a doctor as soon as you can. It sounds very much to me like your dreaming mind incorporated these into the dream plot to let you know there is, or might be, a serious problem.

You've done most of your dream interpretation yourself by associating the Old Woman with Mother Teresa. We're not talking about a Grim Reaper! She is there to reassure you. Some death dreams are predictive; but most are about transitions. The old "dies", the new is "born."

All the more reason to get a checkup. You want to be there for it!