I took the Phone of the Wind on the road again, this time to Toronto and the International Death Symposium. Every time I bring a new iteration of this experience into being I learn more about living and about grief from the people who visit.
I love the people who peek in all tentative and then pop right back out with this look on their faces, a “May I?” in their eyes, and I say, “Yes, this really is here just for you.”
Because it is so seldom that someone makes a space we can bring our self into. And take a risk, lift the phone, be with what is in our hearts, find words or no words, and let it all be enough. You are always enough in the Phone of the Wind. It is a sanctuary for being. And for connecting.
Who would you talk to again if you could?
Is there an ancestor you'd like to formally address?
In Japan a grandmother periodically travels by bus with her young grandsons to visit the original Phone of the Wind so that the boys can update their dead grandfather on their achievements and interests.
How do you connect with the people you wish were still living? Is there a place you leave stones to say you were visiting? Do you have important revelations to make or would you prefer to talk about the weather or some other blessing of the ordinary?
I have started to think of the Phone of the Wind as an agent of radical kinship. It brings me into connection with humans in a gentle way that has no artifice or posture. I don't feel at all nosey about the conversations people are having, although I do really enjoy the comment cards.
The Phone of the Wind is a space to take a moment for yourself. To begin, continue, or end a conversation with a person who cannot be here physically to answer. To reflect on life and loss if you wish.
A place where for a moment every thing else can wait; for words or for no words; for feelings or for inner space. A place that is bigger on the inside; offering the rare comfort of having room for everything we carry with us.
The Phone of the Wind is a dance with silence. A place to press against the boundaries of being and hear our own hearts beating the rhythm that our feet will find and follow back into the day.
