Today I had to interview someone for a feature, which meant that instead of pottering down to the office on foot, I ordered a cab. It arrived straight away, unusual for a weekday morning.
‘So lucky,’ said the driver, ‘you are going exactly where I need to be, that’s why I picked you.’
The luck soon oozed out of our cab, though, because it transpired that the reason why the driver was ‘lucky’ was that after my fare, he was on his way to a funeral that was close to my location. His good friend, another cab driver, had been in a smash on Sunday (just three days before), killed outright after a cement truck cut a red light. Four kids. Youngest 6 months. Oldest 7 years.
‘We only had breakfast together that Sunday morning.’
The story was longer than that, and it came out in bits and pieces as we travelled, leaking out of the driver in sad little sentences as we nudged through traffic. He weaved a few HappyandGrateful comments into the tale (as we often do when we’re grieving) – what God had given him, how lucky he was to have picked my route – but the chatter kept on slumping back to sad silence as we digested each fact, him in front and me in back, and all the while he rubbed his eyes as he drove, apologising for the tears.

I know that a lot of cabs *are* in accidents, and I thought about this as we drove, and the driver gulped back tears.
‘We get so tired,’ he said, as if to confirm.
Usually I check the rearview mirror in a cab to see if the driver is falling asleep, but today I checked for tears. I’m not sure what’s worse.