Taxis and Grandma´s Candles

"Everyone of the eleven taxis that passed the lady at the roadside without stopping to help her should be prosecuted for exposition." my friend says to the taxi driver. The taxi driver stops the car immediately. He tells her to get out of the car.

"You were exposed as well!" I say to my friend. "Yes, but it did not matter, because it was so near my house." "Did you inform the police?" "No, I didn´t. It´s not worth doing. The taxi driver would have said that I had been making trouble. If you are alone, the taxi driver always wins. Had there been another person with me, I would have called the police."

Today I remembered the above conversation from the end of June. I went to see a friend whom I hadn´t visited before. We meet every now and then in the department store where she works. For a long time now she has been one of the important persons who make the life worth living and the town feel my home.

You certainly have some people in your life that are important to you because of the profession they have. In her professional role she says to me: "You need not waste your time now. We have nothing for you to wear." or "Come here. This jacket suits you perfectly." But what has become much more important to me are our conversations - how is your daughter, where shall you travel for your holiday etc.

Some time ago I realised that not only my personal well-being but also my personal existence is totally dependable on my own presence and existence in other people´s lives. If I do not exist in anybody else´s life, I do not exist anywhere else either. Having realised this, it was very alarming that even the Finnish Taxation Office had left me out of their registers. As I am a very happy tax-payer, I felt worried and perplexed. You know this feeling: I´m a useless outsider, nobody needs me, even my income is not worth anything. - That is exactly when I decided to go to people and tell them that I appreciate my own presence and existence in their life. This project is still going on. Yes, you, too, are important to me.

Last time when I met Tuula there were customers around. We could not talk much. She hardly had time to tell me: "No, you haven´t seen me, because I have been on a two months´ sick leave. My daughter was murdered. You remember the newspapers told about a young lady having been found by side of the road in X. It was my daughter. She has three little sons, a nice husband, a happy marriage. It was the first time for seven years she had gone out with her friends... Sorry, I need to go. We have to see later..."

Normal life in Finland - or anywhere else - does very little to prepare us to events like that. You realise that there is very little to say. You start thinking of what could be really important after any tragic incident. Maybe you think of the children that are hurt. And when you are thinking of the children you are thinking of the future.

Today we had time to talk. So far, practically nothing is known about what took place that night. She was a beautiful, young fair-haired lady. She would never have left her handbag and overcoat in a restaurant in winter-spring when we still have some snow everywhere. Obviously something was put into her drink. Cameras show that she was followed by two dark men. However, emphasizing that piece of information is risky as the police will immediately be accused of racism if they do so. As far as I know, eleven taxis passed her daughter later on when she was somewhere outside the town. They cannot be prosecuted either.

My friend in the taxi is a highly qualified professional in restaurant business. She knows the rules of night life. When she referred to this special case, the driver refused to drive further and left her at the roadside. Why did he feel so deeply offended? Does collective guilt hurt as much as individual guilt does?

If you leave anybody out without proper winterclothes in the Finnish winternight, you practically murder him or her. Everybody knows it. All taxis know it. Every one of them has the duty to stop and ask what is going on. Nobody did.

There are too many things here that are out of the range of the normal. My friend Tuula is going to inform the police about what happened to the other friend of mine. Maybe it helps them, maybe it doesn´t. The basic question Tuula and her family have now is: When does the individual guilt hurt much enough to break out as confessions?

While waiting for that, the eldest son will start school, the middle one will become prescholar and the youngest one knows that of the two tall candles they always lit at their grandparent´s house the taller one is for mother. She has a taller candle, because she was so much more beautiful than the father is.