Wind Spirit Phone

In my previous post I mentioned the difficulty most of us have to some degree of accepting death. While inevitable, the means by which we depart are many. This post is about a story I just heard about a Japanese man who lost his wife, child and home in the 2011 tsunami.

Life and place taken so quickly away. There is a commonly shared word in Japan which I don't remember, but it translates into "get by" or endure. It's woven into the fabric of Japanese culture and helped many go on after the devastation in spite of no way to explain or process their feelings.

This man had rebuilt his home but was struggling with his grief and could find no way to express it. Many Japanese are Buddhists and believe there is another place we go when we die. Part of the "enduring" is so those that have died can leave this world and not get stuck in limbo worrying about those they left behind.

One day an idea came to him. He thought, if I can't find a way to express my emotions I will try calling my wife and son on the phone and maybe this way I can say what I feel. He found an old English style phone booth with a rotary phone and set it up in his yard. He called it the Wind Phone or Wind Spirit Phone and hoped his words might travel out carried on the wind to his loved ones wherever they might be.

It did help him and as people in his town passed by and asked about his phone booth word spread. People started showing up in his yard with the hope of reaching those they lost or simply to find a place where they could let their emotions flow out. 

I heard this on an episode from This American Life and the producer of the article actually got permission to record some of the "calls" people made. To attempt to describe them seems maybe disrespectful and I don't have the words, but you can imagine the range of emotions. What brought me to tears was how much of what was spoken into that receiver was the everyday recounting of events and tasks that make up the substance of all our lives. Maybe the accumulation of the little things, what seems mundane, holds us together and keeps us connected in this life and any other as much as our big life events.

Pocket Change

I’ve always liked the way my blue blazer feels when I slip it on. Silk lined, it slides smoothly over my pressed white shirt and I acquire the look of “dressed up”. The fabric is hand stitched ultra-suede and it was made in France, beautiful, fits perfectly, and I found it at the Goodwill for $10.

There is history in the pockets, unfortunately nothing from the previous owner. But over the years I’ve gradually accumulated moments of time in the form of theatre tickets, a folded high school graduation program, restaurant matches from dinners out, spare coins, a Canadian dollar bill and most recently programs from a wedding and two memorial services for family friends that have passed.

Both rich in emotion, a wedding and a funeral are two sides of the same coin. We hope for good things in both this life and beyond physical death. One is pure celebration, the other is often so stiff it seems as if rigamortis in the deceased becomes manifest in all others present. Either numb with our fear and uncertainty about death or locked into a construct of belief that we hope offers – the Truth. But we don’t really know do we?

I have admiration for the power faith has to change the living, but the dead, well we here are left to wonder and either get busy living or get busy dying as was said in The Shawshank Redemption. And there in is a lesson in letting go. Living in the present, doing what we can in this moment and taking stock of our aspirations and actions not out of fear of retribution from a god, but for the selfish and selfless acts of connection to Life in all it’s manifestations.

I hope it offered comfort to some, but near the end of the service a minister got up and asked us all to pray in the name of Jesus Christ. He said if we wanted to see the deceased again we needed to accept Jesus as the way to get to where they were – presumably in heaven. I guess any Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist or other denominational friends in attendance were out of luck, and I had to use better judgement and restrain myself from shouting out “Shalom!” at the end of his preachy lecture. And I'm Irish!

I don't plan on being buried but I haven't decided for sure just yet. Maybe I'll make myself and urn as I have for family and friends. But at my demise, if my blue blazer is still intact I don't think I'll be wearing it. If there is another plane of existence I want to go casual.