Death and taxes. Taxes and death. Taxed until you die. Perhaps we don’t remind ourselves enough of Benjamin Franklin’s words; that these are the only two true things certain in life. Hearing this as a teenager, I recall wondering what this cliche was really going on about.
I know, I know. The innocence of youth.
Taxis are invariably linked to taxes; they share a common etymology that dates back to the ancient Greeks. Indeed, the word taxis evolved from the Greek for tax; to place one’s affairs in a certain order. So much so that an orderly Greek march, a journey, was called a taxidi. Every time we Didi and Uber, use a driver and taxi, we are, in essence, harkening back to this ancient journey: a trip made, money paid. An inevitable tax.
Thus, when we enter a taxi, the certainty of a tax remains: there will be payment and, hopefully, an orderly journey; a tax.
Death is also a certainty; this we know as age continually creeps up, as the body starts to ache more and more, and the years somehow become quicker and quicken, blinking before us before we begin. We hope we can join in with John Donne arguing against our ageing, that we can call on Death to “be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.” Sometimes, though, our taxes and our death; our wealth and our mortality; combine before they should: for me, it was during a taxi journey.
For the closest I have come to death is in a taxi. So close that at times, when the weariness of the current age rears its crazy head, I do wonder if, indeed, I have in fact, been propelled into another universe.
Or perhaps I am in a time-warp and am still in the reality of a death-time-spiral; that death has kindly stopped for me and time-warped and all that has happened since is an imagining of a fevered brain. My faculties, though, seem sound; my loves and passions and vocation still seem alive, and I must conclude that this story of death and taxis was survived, for here I am; and yes, I still have tax to pay.
This moment of collision occurred in a foreign land. 45 minutes of journey ahead, with raw emotions from a farewell party being our companions as we started the trip home. Our driver had arrived on time, in his 2007 slightly wonky car that is very much the Guatemalan norm. We buckled up and settled in for one of the great joys of marriage: the post-dinner chats and analysis of what was said, who was there, and which interesting interactions we observed and those we will dearly miss.
There was snare up on the highway, and in a burst of Spanish, our taxi took a back route that showed flickers of lights echoing through many small, parallel crossings.
Continual crossing after crossing; no stop signs, no traffic lights, no hesitating. Tension seemed to rise inside; our chat stalled; we beat on through interchange after intersection, poorly lit stress, speed, road after road after road.
Then, like the foreshadowed cliche it seemed to be, a black shark-like SUV emerged; speeding, jaws like, exceptionally quick in its death pursuit.
Another cliche came true; time stood still like we were paralysed by it. I can look back and understand how this cliche is rooted in the experience of the brain beginning to process the inevitable; the hurried prayer of greatest meaning, the speeding and slamming and stunning noise and shock break as the unavoidable drip of a reckless accident bears down on us.
Thankfully, for our lives, it was classic T-Bone. Time returned to the dull ache of a second impact; noise, thump, grasping seatbelts, momentum, dazed, dizziness, crumpled. Glasses and phones flying.
In the immediate aftermath, I opened my eyes and was blind; which I stated to my dear Candi. She, with the heroism that defines her, realised that the more significant issue was that our destroyed car was still rolling down a hill; the unconscious driver, not wearing a seatbelt, had been flung to the passenger side; blood covering everything.
In her courageous strength, Candi managed to PULL: the bloody driver; the emergency brake; the seatbelts loose for us; my senses together. My lack of sight was more due to my glasses being hurled than the reality of a concussion of blood; car stopped, sight found, red light bathing us.
It felt peaceful then. Like the ocean ripples had decided to breathe, and paradise was issuing forth glorious words: You Are Alive. Again, time played its tricks; 10 minutes flew past, I am sure, (a few seconds in real-time more likely) before a wave of noise started as a local bar emptied onto a street. Banging on doors, slurred shouting in Spanish, bashing windows…
está bien? está bien?
Never before had I even thought what it would be like to be a casualty of an accident; indeed, it felt like I was again an on-looker, rubbernecking at a car that no one should have walked out of alive, seeing flashing lights and hurried paramedics doing patch-ups and whisking drivers away as a crowd slowly withdrew.
And then, the question; what does one do when their taxi is no longer a taxi? In the dead of night, in a foreign country, with no ease of language? A night of farewells in many ways, and we were overcoming our shock and about to call our friends when a well-meaning paramedic called an Uber for us.
Soon, we were in a taxi again, on another journey home, only 15 minutes of streets to go. Yet the world had changed. Every crossing, every corner, every brake felt like a world ending.
Home at last, death-like hug expressing how close we had come to losing that most valuable, and as tears started, an acknowledgement that it was purely through Grace that we both were not only alive but avoided any life-altering injury. Yet, as the days became a week, the world stayed changed; the assessment of the taxing journey of our lives and the meaning we find in the day-to-day journey from taxes to death. It was, thankfully, an affirmation that the odyssey where we come alive is more often than not found in the classroom where we practise our craft.
So, now, as the story ends, it is time for an inevitable brief public service announcement: the “self help” and obvious things to do that we somehow forget about when using a taxi. We get into a car whose physical safeties are foreign, with a driver we do not know, trusting the app is going to lead to a destination and that we can pay, a tax, on a safe arrival. Perhaps we are too blasé about this: daily in and out of taxies without the consequential thoughts. So yes, always wear a seatbelt. Always! And yes, activate trip tracking for family and friends, and share a location, and let people know your plans, especially in a foreign land. Have your medical card printed and perhaps available in your phone cover (as, I mean, who carries a wallet in China).
Even contemplate the first person to call and what you would do in an emergency, as when it happens, it is good to pre empt the instinctual.
Between writing that last sentence and this, I used a Didi to commute. Any lingering trauma is long disrupted and dispersed after the first few weeks of the accident’s aftermath. Yet the thought of the experience remains. We never found out how our driver recovered. Life is precious, the journey is more important than the destination, and I am still fortunate to be working in the passion where I can become truly come alive.
This taxi trip caused the reflection that can define a life, and the reality that Death and Tax and Taxis will be with us for certain, but not forever. We can instead keep the hope of the dream that Tolkien shared: of our own taxi journey of a life of purpose, and that our lives of a grey rain-curtain will one day turn all to silver glass and be rolled back, and we will behold white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.
