Either answer can apply. You'd have to interpret the dream in order to know.

What you said points to a distinction between lucid dreams and regular dreams. In a regular dream you might be with somebody who is dead or a celebrity you wouldn't be likely to be with, and you won't question what you are experiencing.

In a lucid dream, because you are conscious enough to be aware of the fact that you are a person with a physical existence who is having a nonphysical experience, you might also notice that you're interacting with people that you ordinarilly wouldn't have contact with.

Perhaps you should become curious about how you came to have this dream. Was it a random manifestation of your subconscious mind, or did something such as your higher self create it? Sometimes higher selves create dreams such as the one you had with the hope that the people who have such dreams will become curious about the origin of their dreams and about what reality is all about.

That said, whether or not you made contact with a deceased friend you might've had a verification that there is more to reality than our physical life.

Outsidecreative,
Since you're the creator of lucid dreams, you can decide to blank the canvas you've filled and if someone joined in or you joined someone, a sharing or merging of canvases, they'll still be there. If seriously interested in getting to know this subject you can at the next lucid moment will a person to talk with and notice how thought forms act.

Thanks guys for your responses and Bruce your suggestions are perfect - just treat it like a retrieval... sort of.

I remember during the dream when i went Lucid i had sooooo many questions i wanted to ask my friend they all crashed into each other and i couldn't think of one single decent question to ask! But the coughing fit put an end to anything further anyway.

Recoverer: i've always be 'asking' for contact with someone who's died whether it be in dreams or mediations just so i can get some more verification. (The 'little me' still always needs verification) So it could have been my higher self allowing a connection to be made or something like that.

I still do retrievals, but there's that element of doubt that always creeps in. I've yet to have the awesome belief system crash yet

Volu: One Lucid dream i had, i was able to wipe the scene clean and start with a blank canvas and started with a chair and then a table - but lost focus after that. (maybe building a dining setting was just too boring )

That's a really good point Focus 27.

now i just have to interrogate them next time it happens

Regarding techniques for distinguishing illusory aspects of a dream from genuine ones, you can demand that all subconsciously-created dream elements of your experience be completely removed from your perception, leaving only that which objectively and independently exists.  It's always interesting to see what stays and what goes.

   I haven't posted here for a long time because of health reasons. Now that I feel up to it again, I would like to add some input. Dreaming is one of my favorite ways to learn about levels of consciousness beyond the physical. My experiences have brought me to an understanding that many if not most all dreams create a location on the higher planes that can be revisited.

   I have gone back to dream places on future times that really feel like the same place that I was at on an earlier date. It doesn't have to be a lucid dream to preserve the location, but it helps. Most of my dreams that involved a deceased relative were not lucid, so I was unable to think up any verification questions. All I need is to revisit those locations, but maintain some sort of lucidity so I can get something out of it.