Originally published 2016-04-17.
"The Cab Ride", also shared as "The Taxi Driver" or "The Cab Driver", is a true-life essay by the American writer Kent Nerburn. It describes a night in the late 1980s when he was driving a cab in Minneapolis and nearly left without his last fare: an elderly woman on her way to a hospice, who asked him to take the long way through the city. He switched off the meter and drove her for hours. The story first appeared in his 1999 book Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace, and it has travelled the internet ever since, usually without his name.
Many online copies open with "A New York taxi driver wrote", and pictures of yellow cabs in Times Square like the one above often accompany it. The essay does not take place in New York. Nerburn has said it happened in his home city of Minneapolis.
Who wrote the cab ride story
Kent Nerburn was born in Minneapolis in 1946. He trained as a sculptor, earned a doctorate in religion and art, and spent years working on an oral history project with the Red Lake Ojibwe before turning to writing full time. He is best known for Neither Wolf nor Dog (1994), which won a Minnesota Book Award, and for Letters to My Son. During a lean stretch in the 1980s, he drove a taxi at night.
The cab story is one chapter of Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace, a book of reflections built around the prayer traditionally attributed to St Francis of Assisi. Its chapter title borrows a line of that prayer: "And where there is sadness, joy". Read in that setting, the essay is less a viral tear-jerker than a meditation on how ordinary work can become a form of service.
In a 2008 blog post Nerburn placed the night in Minneapolis in the late 1980s. The fact-checking site Snopes notes that the account cannot be independently confirmed, because the only other person in it was never named and has long since died. Nerburn himself has described the story as something he lived through rather than invented.
What happens in the story
It is the end of a night shift. The driver pulls up at a dark address, sounds the horn, waits, and sounds it again. Nobody comes out. With a last fare that looks like trouble, he is tempted to drive off, as many drivers did with no-shows. Instead he walks to the door and knocks.
A very old woman answers, dressed as if for an occasion from decades earlier, in a print dress and a small veiled hat. Beside her is one small suitcase. Behind her, the apartment has been emptied out: the furniture is under sheets, the walls are bare, and a single box holds what is left of her photographs and glassware.
The image of sheeted furniture captures what the driver sees in her flat: a home that has already been closed up for good.
He carries her bag, then gives her his arm to the car. When she thanks him, he brushes it off and tells her he tries to treat passengers the way he would want his own mother treated. Once in the cab, she gives him an address but asks to go by way of downtown. He points out that it is not the quickest route. She answers that she is in no hurry, because she is going to a hospice. She has no family left, she says, and her doctor has told her she does not have long.
He reaches over and turns off the meter, and asks which way she would like to go.
The long way home
For about two hours they drive through the sleeping city. She shows him the building where she once ran an elevator, the neighbourhood where she and her husband lived as newlyweds, and a furniture warehouse that used to be the ballroom where she went dancing as a girl. At some corners she asks him to slow down and simply looks out into the dark without speaking.
Ordinary buildings like these are the landmarks of her life: workplaces, first homes and old dance halls that mean nothing to anyone driving past, and everything to her.
As the sky begins to lighten, she tells him she is tired and ready to go. They drive in silence to a low building with a covered driveway, where two orderlies are waiting with a wheelchair. When she asks what she owes, he refuses any money. She protests that he has a living to make; he replies that there will be other passengers. On impulse he bends down and hugs her, and she holds on tightly. Her thanks are the line most readers remember: "You gave an old woman a little moment of joy."
He walks back to the cab in the early light and hears the door close behind him, a sound he describes as the closing of a life. He picks up no more fares that shift, and he spends the rest of the day barely able to speak.
The question at the heart of it
The essay ends not with the woman but with the driver's own unease. What if she had drawn a driver who was angry, or in a rush to finish? What if he had honked once and left? He concludes that nothing he has done in his life mattered more, and that we tend to miss our most important moments because they arrive disguised as small ones.
That reversal is why the story works. Most of us picture a meaningful life as a series of big events: careers, achievements, crises. Nerburn's point is that significance often lives in a few unglamorous hours that nobody else will ever hear about. A cab ride costs the driver one fare. For the passenger, it may be the last chance to say goodbye to the city she lived in.
Why the story resonates: loneliness and the end of life
The woman's situation is not unusual. Many older people outlive spouses, siblings and friends, and public health researchers increasingly treat social isolation and loneliness in later life as serious concerns that can affect both physical and mental wellbeing.
The place she is heading to also matters. Hospice care, which grew from the work of the British nurse and doctor Cicely Saunders and the opening of St Christopher's Hospice in London in 1967, focuses on comfort, dignity and the patient's own wishes when a cure is no longer the goal. Today most hospice care is actually given at home, but residential hospices still care for people who live alone or need round-the-clock support, like the passenger in the story.
Her request, to see the places of her life one last time, reflects something hospice workers often describe: people near the end of life frequently want to revisit memories, tell their story and be heard. The driver did not fix anything. He listened, slowed down and let her lead.
Small acts that make a difference
You do not need to drive a cab to put the story into practice. A few ideas grounded in what the essay shows:
- Go to the door. Whether you are delivering, driving or visiting, a few extra steps can matter to someone who moves slowly or is unsure of themselves.
- Let people tell their stories. With older relatives, neighbours or patients, ask about the places and people in their lives, then really listen.
- Give time where you can. The meter is a metaphor for every situation where efficiency is tempting. Occasionally, the slower way is the right one.
- Stay in touch with isolated people. A regular phone call or visit to someone who lives alone can mean far more to them than it costs you.
- Know the services. If someone you know is facing a serious illness, their doctor can explain palliative and hospice options and local support for carers.
Sharing the story fairly
Part of the story's own history is a lesson in credit. Since 1999 it has been copied into chain emails, websites and social media posts, often trimmed, relocated to New York or signed "anonymous". When this site first ran it, it relied on two websites that had reposted the text without naming the author.
If the essay moves you, the best way to share it is to name Kent Nerburn and point people to his book, where the chapter appears in full alongside his other reflections. That is a small act of fairness to a writer whose work has been passed around for decades, and it fits the spirit of the story itself.
Sources: Kent Nerburn, "And where there is sadness, joy", in Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace (1999); Snopes: The Cab Ride; Wikipedia: Kent Nerburn; Wikipedia: Hospice. Earlier reposts: Galactic Channelings via Idealist4ever.
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