Jose, my homeless friend

We feel an enormous emptiness when we lose a friend. An emptiness which fills with anguish, and overflows with anger when we discover in the empty spaces of our lives that the time we should have given to our lost friend has slipped away.

by Jose Machado Pais

This disturbing feeling assails me when I take account of the death of Jose. He was sometimes viewed as a vagabond, a drunk, a madman... But none of that! He was just a homeless man. However, in the dominant social imagery the homeless pay the price for not fitting in to the world, seen as dirty - social rubbish. The common view ignores the misery that surrounds them, even as a way to protect ourselves from feeling guilty. I met Jose sitting on the steps at the entrance to the church of Sao Joao de Deus in Lisbon. He was reading the bible. I learned a lot from Jose. For example, the value of communication, the importance of the word for understanding the mystery of life.

Jose explained to me that when we speak it is because we are, and if we are it is because we are alive, or we are living because we exist. In the same way that we give life to words, words also give us life, an identity of our own, and awareness of our existence. It is what happens, when for example, we are identified by a name.

This article or obituary was published in The Prisma Multicultural newspaper on 28th November 2016, and republished with a different title in 2024. It can be read in full with photos here: https://theprisma.co.uk/2024/03/18/the-philosopher-of-the-street-vagabond-prophet/