This 'wind phone' in Phoenix offers a space to talk through grief after someone dies

Back in 2020, a woman named Amy Dawson lost her 25-year-old daughter, Emily.

In the midst of her grief, she discovered a monument in Japan, built by a man named Itaru Sasaki: a small white phone booth on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, in the town of Otsuchi. Sasaki, who’d suffered a loss of his own several years earlier. He called it a “wind phone,” and the idea was simple: step into the booth, pick up the receiver and speak to those you can no longer reach on a regular phone.

Dawson fell in love with the idea as a way of communicating with Emily, and set up a wind phone of her own. And Dawson set up a website encouraging others to set up or find their own wind phones.

Here in Phoenix, the idea connected with a member of the congregation at the New Vision Center for Spiritual Living, who told Rev. Karin Einhaus about it.

Einhaus was moved by the story, and resolved to set up a wind phone that's open to the public on the center’s campus.

And not long after, she got a call from another member of the congregation.

Full conversation

THE REV. KARIN EINHAUS: He was at a second-hand store and he called me and he said, you're not going to believe what's here, an actual red old telephone booth, like they have them in England.

SAM DINGMAN: Wow.

EINHAUS: And we purchased it right then and there. And that is where our telephone of the wind is housed.

DINGMAN: And can you describe where it sits so people can kind of picture it in their minds?

EINHAUS: Yeah, so we are New Vision Center for Spiritual Living, and we are on Tatum [Boulevard] between Bell [Road] and Union Hills [Drive]. And on our campus, we have created a piece of meditation garden.

And within that piece of meditation garden is a structure that has a telephone in it and also has two chairs in it so people can sit and remain in that space a little well.

DINGMAN: And the idea, for people who aren't familiar with it of the, as you put it, the telephone of the wind, which is a very lyrical way of putting it, is to what, exactly?

EINHAUS: It is to give individuals an opportunity to talk to someone who has passed away either to just have a conversation with them or to say a goodbye they were never able to say, or to continue a connection.

DINGMAN: And does it have an actual physical phone in it?

EINHAUS: Yes, the phone booth has a rotary phone in it, and this telephone is not connected to any network.

Bill Sneed

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Handout

DINGMAN: Is there anything in the booth that offers guidance or anything or prompts or anything like that? Or is the idea just to go in and have your own experience?

EINHAUS: There's a little picture that says, "you're welcome here to connect with however it feels right for you. Know that you are safe here." And that's all.

DINGMAN: Have you spent any time in the booth yourself?

EINHAUS: I have. A very important community member who has been a friend for 20 years made his transition last year. And so I often go to the booth. And going there puts me in a very open and vulnerable space that I can just connect with him.

One of the things that it was his totem was always the hummingbird. That's actually from him, the hummingbird.

DINGMAN: The hummingbird pendant, yeah.

EINHAUS: And so when I go there, because it's in our piece of meditation garden, there are often hummingbirds. And what's so wonderful is to just be there and to share with him what's going on.

DINGMAN: So may I ask, do I understand that correctly, that you go into the booth, you lift the receiver, and physically speak into the receiver to tell him about the hummingbirds and whatever else is happening?

EINHAUS: Yes. It feels so easy. It feels so easy. I did ask the community to share stories with me. If that's OK, I would like to.

DINGMAN: Oh, certainly. Yeah, you have a printout here.

EINHAUS: Yes. And so this is from Colleen Gerardi, who said, please use my name. And she said:

“I would love for you to share the story, how I connect with my son, Nicholas. And she said, when I first began using the phone, the calls were tender, simple, I miss you messages filled with tears. And over time, those calls have changed. They've become more raw and powerful, filled with anger and questions about why he did what he did. I often find myself stopping here in the middle of the day just to get things off my chest.”

And she goes on saying that, "this outlet has been incredibly healing. It has helped me uncover and release emotions I didn't even know I was holding within."

DINGMAN: That's very powerful to hear her share that it's not always pleasant feelings that she needs to express when she uses the phone.

EINHAUS: Yeah.

DINGMAN: So is there any other practice like this that you are aware of, that the telephone of the wind reminds you of? Or does it seem unique in your experience as a faith leader and spiritual teacher?

EINHAUS: I think for me, personally, I use meditation and prayer as a way to connect to what I call the allness of life and the realization that we're all connected.

And I find sometimes it's really helpful to have a ritual around it. So going to the telephone booth, opening the door, and picking up the receiver is in some ways like for me going into my prayer chair and sitting down and praying.

DINGMAN: Would you be comfortable sharing, what do you make of the wind element of the telephone of the wind? Because I can't help noticing it's not called like a spirit telephone or other things we could imagine it being referred to as.

EINHAUS: That is such a good question. I have seen the picture of where the original telephone of the wind has been placed in Japan and there is it looks like pretty soon the landscape falls away and gives rise to the ocean, right?

And so I imagine that there's always wind going on. And I wonder if that is how it came about. And it works. It works because the wind carries away from us whatever we want to release.

DINGMAN: Sometimes it brings things back, too.

EINHAUS: I was just going to say, it invites us to listen, right?

DINGMAN: Yeah. Would you also be comfortable sharing when you go to use it yourself to speak to this person who, as you said, has passed on, do you ever hear anything back?

EINHAUS: I do. I hear an echo of what we talked about. It's almost a lived memory that comes up.

And I believe that those memories are within me and they could come up at any time and to make space for it and to listen. I think that's what makes it powerful.

DINGMAN: Thank you for sharing that.

Do people usually come to use the phone by themselves?

EINHAUS: I have seen both. We have also had a group of people who come. And I think it was shortly after we had a memorial service in our sanctuary and a celebration of life. And then the entire family went out and had like a collective phone call.

It almost felt like when you call somebody who is not close by and it's their birthday and everybody huddles around and says something, that's how it was. And it was just, it normalized talking about grief.

And here we're not so used to expressing our grief and being with it and sharing it openly. And this is an opportunity to do that.