I dreamt that I was coming out of a crowded student canteen when I bumped into two colleagues from a neighboring department. Both of them were in their best and darkest. “Imagine, “one of them said in a strong American accent, “Mark Owen died.” They were just returning from the funeral. I was taken aback, but the rest of our conversation was sheer boilerplate. He was such a wonderful fellow. There was no better colleague or friend anywhere around. The illness got him against all expectations. It is hard to imagine how the department will ever replace him. The best we can do is plough on. Etc. A good number of such standard phrases came out of my own mouth, too. I woke up soon after I left my colleagues, but I could not remember Mark Owen at all. It took me a while to remember that Mark Schuster died several years ago. He was in his late fifties when he passed away. We were in the same doctoral program at MIT, but I graduated some years before him. While we were students, we used to play squash together. Later on he indeed worked in a neighboring department, for our two departments formed a school bringing architecture and planning together. Most important, all the good words from the conversation in my dream fit Mark Schuster perfectly. He was a wonderful fellow, indeed. The only remaining mystery is what happened with his family name in my dream.