Does the dream ever replace the memory?

I wonder what percentage of dreams, as we get older, become simple mental replays of people who aren’t around anymore.

I find myself relating to Ed Tom dialogue more the older I get.

“And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make afire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.”