(Taryn Lindhorst is the Behar Professor and Director of the Center for Integrative Oncology and Palliative Care Social Work at the University of Washington School of Social Work and serves as the director of the school’s PhD program. Prior to receiving her doctorate in 2001, she spent 15 years providing medical social work services in public-health settings in New Orleans. Reprinted with permission from The Conversation, which has editions around the globe and twice weekly posts thought-provoking articles that showcase some of the best of the international network. The original version of this article is here.)
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My mother died in my home in hospice in 2020, on the day my state of Washington went into COVID-19 lockdown. Her body was taken away, but none of the usual touchstones for grief was available to our family.
There was no funeral or supportive gathering, no deliveries of food, and no hugs. For months afterward, as the nationwide lockdown continued, thousands of other families like mine saw these death rituals – society’s social supports for grieving – stripped away.
As a clinical social worker and health scholar with 40 years of experience in end-of-life care and bereavement, I knew that I needed some way to tend to my grief for my mother. While in lockdown, I began looking for resources to help me. Then I heard about the wind phone.
What is a wind phone?
At its simplest, a wind phone is a rotary or push-button phone located in a secluded spot in nature, usually within a booth-type structure and often next to a chair or bench. No phone line is connected.
People use the wind phone to “call” and have a one-way conversation with deceased loved ones. Here they can say the things left unsaid. Wind phones offer a setting for the person to tell the story of their grief, to reminisce, and to continue to connect to the person who is gone.
For many, it is a deeply moving, life-affirming experience.
About 225 wind phones are scattered throughout the United States. Wind phones are open to the public, free of charge, and usually found in parks, along walking trails, and on church grounds. Typically, they are built by those who want to honor a lost loved one.
The wind phone began in Japan in 2010, when Itaru Sasaki, a garden designer, built a phone booth in his yard so he could “talk” with a deceased relative. Months later, the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami hit; in a matter of minutes, more than 20,000 people died.
Sasaki opened the phone booth to his neighbors, who urgently needed a place to express their grief. Word spread, and soon people came on pilgrimages from around Japan to speak through the “phone of the wind” to those they loved.
Since then, wind phones have spread throughout the world.
Research is needed
In American culture, it’s common to talk about obtaining closure for the loss of a loved one – to get over it and move on. It is true that the initial period of deep sadness and trauma typically fades over time, but some grief can persist across a lifetime.
In the weeks, months and years after the death, feelings can erupt unexpectedly in “grief attacks,” or as sudden waves of emotion, triggered by a memory, a smell, an event or a thought.
To my knowledge, no research has been conducted on wind phones, so it’s not yet possible to say from a scientific perspective whether they definitively help a person cope with their grief. This is not surprising; studies on grief have not received as much research attention as mental-health disorders, such as depression or anxiety, although grief can lead to either of these disorders.
Yet the rapid spread of wind phones over the past decade suggests, if nothing else, that there is an almost universal need for those in mourning to engage with grief. And for the thousands who have tried it, there is comfort to be found through a one-way call.
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Final Exit Network (FEN) is a network of dedicated professionals and caring, trained volunteers who support mentally competent adults as they navigate their end-of-life journey. Established in 2004, FEN seeks to educate qualified individuals in practical, peaceful ways to end their lives, offer a compassionate bedside presence and defend a person’s right to choose. For more information, go to www.finalexitnetwork.org.
Payments and donations are tax deductible to the full extent allowed by law. Final Exit Network is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
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Thanks for sharing.
I have had a back and forth with my son about the concept : “Be alert to signs that appear in your life that will share with you that your mother is OK, where she is meant to be, and still with you. And don’t forget to call your mother on that wind phone. And now that I am thinking about it and your wanderlust…a wind phone world tour? Introduce people to seeing grief as fluid and ever changing.” My home state has wind phones thanks to Lynda Bluestein – as if she did not do enough, she also left behind wind phones.