[Oops! I just noted the age of this thread! Feeling a bit late to the game and likely irrelevant, but I'll leave the post anyway...]
That is a tough thesis indeed!
I too dream often of my deceased parents and friends, though I do so almost exclusively when not lucid. I have a feeling we all dream regularly about deceased loved ones. Which raises the question of difficulty:
Since our loved ones no doubt enjoy a substantial foothold in our unconscious minds, it seems very likely we would continue to dream about them long after they are gone, just as we dreamed about them when they were alive. How we interpret our encounters with them would likely vary from person-to-person, based on individual expectations, hopes, and beliefs, and though those encounters might be quite memorable and even seem very real, or unusual, they might all just be the continued appearances of dream characters generated by our unconscious minds. Not that I would mind seeing you do so, but how on earth do you disprove that?
That said:
I do hold dear one medium-level lucid I had in which I ran into my parents at an outdoor bazaar. Normally when my parents appear, I have little to no lucidity and do not remember that they are dead; also, they always appear as they did in the years just preceding their deaths. This time, however, they appeared to me as they looked in their early 20's (long before I was born), didn't speak a word, and gazed upon me with a kind of loving joy I cannot describe. I both knew well that they were both dead and that I was dreaming, but something made me pause and just soak up their presence as if they were real, that they wanted to let me know that they were doing well, and that, well, there was more. This time, I chose not to make any lucid changes to the dream, chose to suspend disbelief for just a minute, and chose to keep silent myself, lest I corrupt this perfect moment. It seemed worth it then, as it does now. Whether there was a connection with the actual dead, though, I can never be sure and certainly never prove, even to myself.
... just thought I'd share. Good luck to you, Donald, and please be sure to share with us if you discover anything, because, as Sowitbe noted already, any verification in a subject like this is indeed huge!
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