musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Wind Phones


There are times when I wonder how much of it I need: Time, I mean. It’s not that I wish to shorten it unduly, just that there are times when it gathers as a storm approaching on the horizon like I used to see as a child living on the prairies. Now, of course, I suppose it heralds something altogether different from those halcyon days: I overthink things now; I beckon and attempt to analyse that which I simply used to await with curious anticipation. It was all well and good, until it wasn’t.

But Time seems different now: in my mind, memories are becoming increasingly intertwined with dreams. Now that I am retired, sleep is not sore labour’s bath, nor does it knit up the ravelled sleeve of care: I dream; it is no longer innocent… In fact, I never know what I am in for nowadays; there is no program, no script -just a half-remembered postlude that dissolves in the shower leaving puzzling remnants in its wake. It’s just words sometimes -words whose meaning, let alone spelling are gone before I can dry my hair. At other times, it is a feeling, a sadness that I have lost a friend I had just met on a brief and fateful visit to Brigadoon, never to be seen again in my lifetime.

And then there is the dream music I have never heard before or since -a waste, really… I am not a musician; I cannot make use of it in this world, and anyway, I can’t remember much of it -only the effects it had on me, the tears I shed as I was listening to it as I slept. I suppose it, too, is another friend I will never encounter again out here in the wide awake-world.

But, dreams are not quite like memories, however: they often fade too quickly to be fully grasped; only their emotions, vague and incorporeal, linger until they dissolve as we move about the day. No, I would prefer stacks of memories, not dreams, as I age: a drawer filled with wrinkled recollections of my past that I can riffle through when the days grow clouds. Still, even though I might attempt to remember those who’ve left, attempt to react differently to their presence, to whisper softer words in their ears, they do not bend with my pleas.  

Nevertheless, there are those who feel a need to screen their memories. Even if they are not perfect, for them there is still the hope that the remembrance of things past will re-create them if only for a moment -never as real as they would wish of course, but nonetheless helpful in addressing things they didn’t, or couldn’t, at the time. When I was a child, for weeks after my dog had died, I would still stop by his kennel in the yard, and call him softly -just in case.

My parents were married for sixty-some years and after my father died, my mother was eventually unable to cope on her own. We found her a friendly elder-care facility that she seemed to tolerate, but even there, the attendants would tell me that they would sometimes find her sitting by herself in the common room smiling and talking to a photograph of my father.

The photo was her wind phone, I suppose, although I’d never heard of the term until I happened upon it in an article in the Smithsonian[i]. For some, the past never goes away, never really dies; there is immortality in remembrance. The ‘phone’ is one way of reminiscing, perhaps: a way of seeking absolution, or commiseration from the past by talking to it.  

The wind phone apparently began in Japan in 2010, when a garden designer named  Itaru Sasaki, built a phone booth in his yard so he could “talk” with a deceased relative. It was just before the Fukushima disaster happened, and so he opened the phone booth for his neighbours, as a place where they could express their grief. It caught on, and people came from all over Japan to speak through the ‘phone of the wind’ to those they loved.

The idea of verbalizing grief is powerful, and often therapeutic, so the rather unique idea of ‘wind phones’ seems to be spreading. As the article points out, ‘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. The phone line is disconnected. 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.’

But although the ‘phone’ is an interesting idea: a familiar physical object which endorses the confession of one’s grief, it seems only the latest iteration of speaking of one’s anguish to inanimate objects. It happens all around us, if we are attentive to it.

There is a memorial garden in a forest near where I live; I sometimes wander through it quietly, reverently, like I suppose I might a sacred space. But I seldom linger there, despite the occasional benches scattered along the gravel path -perhaps I’ve managed to process my grief a different way.

Still, my favourite is a bench hidden behind a grove of trees that overlooks a lagoon, and one day, I decided it might be a pleasant place to rest for a moment. As I approached it, though, I could hear a soft voice speaking as if to a friend sitting beside her enjoying the day. I didn’t want to intrude, but I have to admit I was curious: the little park is almost always empty…

I followed the path and slowly rounded the trees only to see an elderly lady sitting by herself and gazing at the water. She heard my footsteps on the gravel and looked up with a beatific smile on her wrinkled face. Then, with a wave of her hand, asked me if I’d like to sit with her.

“This was Geoff’s favourite spot,” she explained. “We used to sit here and watch the ducks swimming on the pond… especially when he became ill.” She sighed and turned to look at the lagoon again. “I like to think part of him is still here; sometimes when the wind rustles the leaves, I think it’s him letting me know…”

She let her eyes rest on me for a moment. “And when I saw you coming around the trees, I thought perhaps he was worried that I was lonely and sent you to here keep me company…” A smile resurfaced on her face. “Silly what the mind can do, eh?”

I smiled, but slowly shook my head. “It’s wonderful what it can do…”

[i] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/what-are-wind-phones-and-how-do-they-help-with-grief-180985113

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