Memorial for Keith Johnson

Keith Johnson had a dream. He wanted to raise enough money to establish a home for runaway teens who were unhoused and living in the streets of Portland. He died last week at the age of 39 after years of suffering with diabetes. His friends gathered at Sisters of the Road, a meeting place and restaurant for unhoused people and their friends. 

It was impossible to pick one photo that expressed the love, the grief, and the kindness of the unhoused community for one of their own. (Extras.) I thought, as I watched one person after another come forward to say how Keith had listened to them, turned them around, offered hugs, helped them become sober, fed them, made them laugh, or given them of the little he had, that the world is upside down. The greediest and stingiest people have billions; the kindest struggle to survive at all, sleep in doorways, and eat from garbage cans. There was palpable love in that room full of people with mental and physical illnesses and no material wealth. We were standing in the love one man generated from his own store of emotional wealth.