The Phone of the Wind…

I sat scrolling on my phone the day before my husband and I were heading up north for an anniversary trip, half-heartedly searching for new restaurants to try or places to visit. We love “windshield time” on our drives and wandering in new places. A few interesting restaurants popped up, but none caught my attention like the 4th thing down on the “Interesting places nearby” list…

As I looked at the photo, I was instantly transported back to my Gram’s kitchen, a place I only get to visit in my thoughts since her death 30 years ago…

Arriving at her house, nearly an hour away from my own was one of my very favorite places to arrive, EVER. She was joy, doting, silliness, all our favorite foods and oh, the smell of her…if happiness had an aroma, it was her.

I could tell you so many things about my beloved Gram…but this post, this one is mostly about her phone.

In her wide open kitchen and dining room, decorated with popular colors of the seventies, exactly kitty-corner from her dining room table where we had a million tea parties and games of Rummy, was her orange rotary telephone. The coiled chord was long and always twisted. Her phone is likely where I began to love the color orange, long before I attended Hope College. Because her phone, kept her close to me, even when she lived an hour away…

She would tell me so many things, always making me laugh. One of my very favorite stories of her phone was how when a little boy called one day and she answered, he told her, “I am sorry, I must’ve called the wrong number.”

“Oh, that’s ok,” she told him, “I’m Liz, how are you?” They began to talk and giggle, and from then on, he would call on purpose, “to talk to his friend.”

She would tell me about long conversations with my cousins, her best friend, Eloise and Sandy, who cut her hair. And we were apart, she would make me giggle on the phone, stories about my grandpa’s escapades, including spilling paint all over her kitchen floor. Black. paint.

As this picture rolled across my phone, all the memories of Gram’s orange phone danced around my memory immediately.

I spend a great majority of my time as a therapist offering support and listening to stories of loss. As strange as it may sound, this area of life and loss is the most natural for me as a mental health professional. There are so many reasons why – some my own experiences of loss, professional experiences, training, those whose lives have impacted mine permanently. But let me be so clear…the greatest reason I am a therapist specializing in grief and loss is because God is sovereign.

What began in my journey began with a supervisor who exudes such race and dignity; she modeled the beauty that is possible in end-of-life care. Countless role models who were similar and an internship that allowed me to better understand the whole picture of loss, care and the bereavement process. Though we did not name it so, it was in that internship in Hospice care that I learned both/and.

Gram died 9 years before that internship and it was there I began to understand what mourning is.

21 years later, it is my privilege to hear many stories of loss, lament, agonizing, breath-taking pain and hope. I am given the tender invitation into some of my clients hardest, most raw moments and my greatest hope is to offer hope; to bear witness to the painstaking wrenching of heart, soul and mind, or the questions that feel unanswerable.

It is the reason that the phone of the wind caught my attention at all…

It is the oldest, most painful sentiment of so many this side of heaven..

“if I could only talk to them one more time…”

“I didn’t get to say goodbye…I needed to tell her that I love her.”

“He didn’t know….”

As I sat looking at the photo of the Phone of the Wind, “nearby,” I was immediately drawn to know more. What was it? I peered at the plaque on the the picture, drew in a breath and began to search for the story behind this beautiful sentiment.

A phone booth the first-ever wind phone, an unconnected telephone booth in Ōtsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, where visitors can hold one-way conversations with deceased loved ones. Initially created by garden designer Itaru Sasaki in 2010 to help him cope with his cousin’s death, it was opened to the public in the following year after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami killed over 15,000 people in the Tōhoku region. The wind phone has since received over 30,000 visitors.

As of December, 2023, there are more than 100 wind phone replica’s worldwide.

I was amazed, my brain full of thoughts, from my Gram’s orange phone, my brave clients in various journeys with loss and instantly the idea of comfort in the form of a disconnected phone in the wind.

A short search brought me to this novel. I can never turn down a book, especially one that can teach me more about grief.

I bought them both and was quickly drawn in.

This novel is rich in detail, wisdom and hope.

For several years, Yui’s image of happiness had resided in the telephone booth and the heavy black object with the numbers 1 to 0 arranged in a circle on the front. With her ear pressed to the receiver, she would become absorbed in the view of the garden on that remote hillside in northeast Japan. From there she could see the glittering sea, smell the salt rising up in the ripples. From there Yui would dream of talking to her daughter, whose life had ended after only three years and her mother, who had held the little girl until the very end.” (The phone at the edge of the world, page 9.)

And further, Yui and Takeshi gradually realized that the Wind Phone was conjugated differently for each person; everyone’s grief looked the same at first, but was, ultimately, unique. (p 124.)

It is a story of grief, trauma, love and understanding.

After husband and I went searching for the Wind Phone but couldn’t find it, I began to dream on our drive home. I talked all about building one with an orange phone like Gram’s.

Searching eBay and Facebook marketplace, I immediately found “her” phone for a minimum of $400.00. Clearly, I was not the only one looking for an orange rotary phone!

For the next couple months we searched for a rotary phone (in other colors as well) and finally found a red one.

We vacillated between creating one to put on public land and one at our home.

About a month ago, after using wood from a friend’s barn, a piece of copper once owned by my grandpa who was a tin smith, my husband bought me to kitchen and showed me the most perfect Wind Phone.

Two days later, he brought home the plaque:

I am so thankful for husband’s many talents and his ability to make a multitude of dreams come true. I am thankful for the journey, even though there are some tremendously hard parts. Without those, I couldn’t walk the journey with others.

I am ever thankful for my Jesus, the ultimate voice of the wind in many ways. He is the reason I will be reunited with loved ones, the reason for everything.

I pray that if you are missing one you love, know there is hope. Reach out, lean in and keep being kind to yourself. You are not alone.