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.