Helen
Welcome to the Forum.
Dreams are a magical mirror in which your innermost hopes, longings, fears/terrors and genius are made real. They are made real as external environments, people, animals and relationships. So the person you dreamt about is not them, but is a dream image made out of your feelings and memories.
It is a process to move from having lost your mother in your outer world towards integrating your mother in your inner world, which integration will "bring her back to life", to your inner life:
Inner Mother: Many people do not realise that they have an inner mother equally as powerful as an external mother. You have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with your mother, and they are what makes you the person you are. This is true even if your mother was never there for you – you still have all the memories of her not being there for you filed under ‘Mother’. The memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event.
Please also read
http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/questions-2/#IntegrateI wonder if there is any change in this recurring dream or if it is always the same?
In general dreams recur because there are ways the dreamer habitually responds to their internal or external world. Because their attitude or response is unchanging, the dream that reflects it remains the same. It is noticeable in those who explore their dreams using such techniques as described under processing dreams, that recurring themes disappear or change because the attitudes or habitual anxieties that gave rise to them have been met or transformed.
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/processing-dreams/What you perceive as a mistake in your dream, I merely perceive as a form of ignorance; of not being aware yet that your inner mother is a living part of your inner world.
And your being concerned about having to inform "people" I see as some fear for what the awareness and integration of your inner mother will mean to the different other aspects of yourself.
Anna :-)