Dreaming about a relative dying: what it means and what it is not

Dreaming about a relative dying is not a warning

Dream interpretation is not prediction and not diagnosis. This article separates what sleep research observes from what popular interpretation associates with the theme, always saying which is which.

Dreaming that a relative died does not predict their death, is not a sign of illness and does not mean you wish anyone harm. Here the person is alive in the real world, and the dream usually goes along with worry about their health, distance, a recent fight, a change in the family or simply the fear of losing someone you love.

It is a variation of dreaming about death and it is different from dreaming about someone who has died, which deals with people who have actually passed away and is usually tied to grief.

Read also: Dreaming about family and Dreaming about a funeral or a coffin.

Why the death of a family member shows up in dreams

This is among the most common nightmares. In an online study of recent nightmare reports, Michael Schredl and Anja Göritz found the death or injury of close people among the themes that come up most often, alongside being chased, falling and being physically attacked. The list of typical dreams used by Tore Nielsen and colleagues also includes several themes of death and threat. In other words, a lot of people go through this.

The continuity hypothesis, tested by Schredl and Hofmann, helps explain the rest. Whatever fills the day comes back at night: a father who is about to have a medical test, a grandmother who fell at home, a brother who is on the road, news of an accident, the funeral of an acquaintance. Sometimes the issue is not even health, but the feeling of losing someone in another way, through a move to another city, a marriage or growing apart.

Sources: Schredl and Göritz, Nightmare Themes, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2018; Nielsen and colleagues, Dreaming, 2003; Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003.

Who dies in the dream and what usually goes with it

Each figure has its own article: dreaming about your mother, dreaming about your father, dreaming about a sibling, dreaming about a grandparent and dreaming about a child.

See also: Dreaming about a newborn baby and Dreaming about a birthday.

Freud, Jung and faith on this dream

In Freud's psychoanalysis. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud treats dreams about the death of beloved relatives as a typical group and separates two cases. When the dreamer feels no sadness, the dream, in his view, hides another wish; his example is an aunt who saw her nephew in a coffin because what she really wanted was to see again someone she had met at an earlier funeral. When there is pain, Freud linked the dream to old childhood wishes, but he made a point of saying he would never use this dream as proof that the person wants the relative dead today. He also noticed that the day's worry about the person's safety often finds its way into these dreams. This is theory, much debated, not a laboratory finding.

In Jung's psychology. In the Jungian reading, the dream compensates for the attitude of waking life and speaks in images. The death of a father, in this key, can stand for the end of a way of relating to him, as when a son or daughter starts making decisions on their own. Man and His Symbols reminds us that the meaning depends on the life of the person who dreamed.

In symbols and in faith. In A Dictionary of Symbols, Chevalier and Gheerbrant treat death not only as an end but also as passage and renewal, as in the 13th card of the tarot's major arcana. In many families of faith, the dream becomes a reason to pray for the relative, and that is a response of care, not of fear.

Bringing the two readings together. Research says the dream is common and grows out of worry; faith offers a gesture to calm the heart. A loving phone call usually does both some good.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols; Chevalier and Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols.

When this dream calls for attention

A dream like this every now and then is part of life. It is worth talking to a health professional when the nightmare repeats almost every week, when you start being afraid to go to sleep, or when you wake up and need to check on the relative several times a day to calm down. It may be a sign of anxiety, and anxiety can be treated; see how to spot signs of anxiety in your body. Frequent nightmares also have evidence-based treatment: see how to have fewer nightmares.

If the relative really is ill, the dream usually reflects that real fear. Talking with the family and with the team caring for them helps more than trying to decode the scene.

Source: Morgenthaler and colleagues, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2018.

What dream books record

In O Livro dos Sonhos, a Brazilian dream book, L. P. Baçan has no entry for the death of a relative. The closest ones are two: relative, which in life would point to news and in love to a breakup; and death, which in life would point to change and in love to news. It is a reading from folk tradition, not a prediction.

Freud called this way of reading "decoding": each image is swapped for another with a fixed meaning, as in a code, with no guarantee that the key is right.

Sources: L. P. Baçan, O Livro dos Sonhos, 2014; Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900.

What folk belief associates with it

In Brazil, one of the most repeated readings is that dreaming about someone's death is a sign of long life for that person. It is also said that the dream announces a change in the family, such as a wedding, a move or a birth, and that a relative who dies and comes back to life points to a hard phase that will pass. Many people use the scare as a reason to call, visit or make peace. These are popular beliefs, kept with affection by many families, not predictions. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.