I have been through two very painful deaths, first by brother then my father and both had very similar transitions from shock to acceptance to grief and finally to the new normal. Both cases took years to heal. I stopped dreaming about my brother after about 10 years of his death. It has been 5 years since my dad passed and I still have very vivid dreams that upset me very much, but they are much less common now than say two years ago and I know at some point, like the dreams about my brother, they will stop. Everything succumbs to time, including grief.