Dreams can feel like distant memories if you do not work on remembering them. Work on improving your memory, and you should notice they improve to become amazingly vivid. Start a dream journal, and make a point of telling yourself to remember your dreams every time you go to bed. With a little practice, they can become more vivid than real life.

Part of the problem is, you are not aware while the dream is happening, so you don't make a point of noticing how awesome everything is. You end up just remembering the dream the way you would remember yesterday's breakfast. It happened, but it was nothing special. Just a vague memory. Lucidity fixes this. If the breakfast was particularly delicious or memorable, or you made a point of taking time to enjoy it, it would become a more vivid memory. You could remember yourself taking a step back to enjoy it in addition to the memory itself. I don't know if I'm making any sense.