Does "absent friends" have definite association with deceased family/friends?

Having gotten married this year and acting as best man for my brother, one of the responsibilities for speeches was a toast "to absent friends".

With some of our family no longer being alive, for us this evoked memories of them.

Is the implication of lost loved ones strong enough that this is a widely understood euphemism for dead family and friends?

It appears to be more common to understand the “absent friends” toast as referring to live people not in attendance, as well as the dead. There may be some generational or regional differences in interpretation. Example speeches at hitched.co.uk (1, 2) illustrate how common. On other occasions, such a toast may refer only to dead friends and relatives.