Distressing, common, and almost never literal. Dreaming of a mother's death is read as the bond transforming — in the East a summons to filial attention, in the West separation and the changing inner mother, in Ibn Sirin's tradition a matter of care and duty, not a foretelling.
Three readings
In Western psychology · Jungian
Psychologically the dying dream-mother is usually the changing relationship, not the person: the internal mother — the voice of care, judgment, and origin — transforming as you grow, individuate, or watch her age. It visits at departures, marriages, her illnesses and recoveries, and your own becoming a parent. Grief felt in the dream is real grief — anticipatory, developmental — and the dream is where it practices. It loves her; that is why it rehearses losing her.
The Chinese tradition reads such dreams first as summons: the classics tie dreams of parents to filial duty — attention owed, health to be asked after, time not to be presumed. A parent's death in a dream was often read contrarily, toward their长寿 — longevity — while still nudging the dreamer to call home. The dream's work, in this frame, is the tenderness it produces on waking. Use it.
The tradition reads a parent's death in a dream cautiously and kindly — often toward long life for them, or toward a matter concerning one's duty of care — and never as a sentence. The mother in Islam carries immense weight; the dream is read as touching that weight, not threatening it. As meaning: the bond is asking for something — presence, reconciliation, prayer — and the dream has your attention exactly as intended.
Does dreaming of my mother dying mean it will happen?
No tradition reads it as prediction — Chinese and Islamic classics often read it contrarily, toward her long life. It reliably marks the bond transforming or your attention being summoned, not her fate.
Why do I have this dream when she's perfectly healthy?
Because it tracks the relationship, not her health: your leaving home, her aging, your own parenthood, an unresolved conflict. The dream rehearses the unthinkable to make you attend to the present.
I woke up crying — is that bad?
It is the dream working. The grief is real — anticipatory and loving — and its usual effect is exactly right: call her. Dreamers across traditions report the same instinct, and every tradition endorses it.
This is the general reading. Your dream is specific.