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Nestled in the woods at Heritage Acres Memorial Sanctuary near Cincinnati, a black, push-button phone is perched on the sturdy trunk of a sky-scraping red oak tree. It is easily accessible by trail at this beautiful natural burial preserve, but it is a little off the beaten path to offer privacy. Next to the phone is a handmade cedar bench where someone can sit, think, and reflect for a while. This "phone of the wind" was installed in the woods at Heritage Acres by volunteer Julia Sandman to offer solace to those who are grieving and to provide an arboreal safe space to reach out to lost loved ones. The framed message beneath the phone states: "This phone is for everyone who has lost a loved one. The phone is an outlet for those who have messages for their lost friends and family. It is a phone for memories and saying the goodbyes you never got to say."
The first wind phone was erected by Itaru Sasaki in his garden near Otsuchi, Japan, one of the areas that suffered the most from the tsunami of March 11, 2011. Originally, Sasaki constructed the phone booth to communicate with a cousin who had recently died of cancer, but after the tsunami, Sasaki opened his phone booth to anyone willing to make the pilgrimage to the booth to express their grief. This old-fashioned phone booth, equipped with a rotary phone, quickly became a lifeline for those who lost loved ones in the tsunami. On a broader scale, it has initiated a movement, inspiring people to create and install these phones across the world.
When we are navigating our way through the complexities of grief, it is essential that we have a safe space to express ourselves, but not everyone has access to a grief counselor or another person with whom they feel comfortable sharing their feelings. Wind phones can potentially provide that safe space. As personally unique as the grieving process itself, the experience of using a wind phone is different for everyone. Some may find it cathartic and healing, while others may simply appreciate the quiet opportunity to reflect on their emotions and memories of someone they lost. Those who believe in the afterlife or a spiritual existence beyond human form may feel a connection to their loved one that is comforting and validating. The wind phone presents this gentle way to allow your voice to be carried away on the wind to the spirit of someone who has died.
While perhaps existing only in our hearts and minds, the symbolic phone conversation creates a palpable link to those we have lost and allows us to speak the unspoken, to utter what we wish we would have said before they died, to whisper goodbye, to say I love you one more time, to right a wrong. It gives us the opportunity to have that heartfelt moment with our friend or loved one that can help bring us closer to closure in the journey through grief and healing. Even though you know there are no physical wires connecting this phone to a larger communication system that can reach anywhere in the world, in your heart, you might very well feel a strong connection.
Reverend Deborah Rundlett, who was interviewed in 2023 in an episode of NPR’s "All Things Considered," stated that the wind phone “is a means by which to have the conversations you didn't get to have—the good, the bad, the ugly—and know that the wind will carry them to the source that needs to receive them.”
There is a powerful psychological and emotional process at work that transcends logic when you pick up the receiver of a wind phone and "dial" the number of a lost loved one. It may be a number you’ve dialed thousands of times before or just a few times, but this act of calling that phone number and speaking into the mouthpiece carries an emotional significance that can be surprising, and if not life-altering, then grief-altering.
Why has there been so much interest in wind phones in recent years? Is it the possibility of contact or the possibility of connection, or does it stir something inside of us about how we perceive the great mystery that awaits us all? It all depends on what you think you might hear when you listen to the receiver of the wind phone. Perhaps using the wind phone allows us to listen closely enough to our own inner knowing and wisdom and long enough so that we can experience a deeper understanding of our own existence.
Wind phones are typically push-button or old repurposed rotary phones. We live in a time when our lives are dominated by the digital and virtual, where our “data” is stored in a cyberspace cloud that might make us feel powerless. The tactile experience of dialing an analog phone gives us a break from the digitized world. The phones come in all shapes and sizes, some with booths, many without. When we step into the space set aside for a wind phone, we are taking a break from everyday life to potentially experience the extraordinary.
The wind phone tucked into the woods at Heritage Acres Memorial Sanctuary is just one of many installed across the world as the interest in them continues to grow. Mywindphone.com is collecting location information about these phones for those who are seeking this outlet as a means of working through their grief. The more wind phones that are installed across the world in spaces both private and public, the more we can move closer to normalizing grief and helping others, and ourselves, fully understand that it is OK to experience grief and want to express it to those we have lost.
