There are conversations that end before people are ready for them to end. A question never asked. A story that happened after someone was gone. An apology, an update, or simply the familiar words, “I miss you.”
Beginning this week, Avita Home Health & Hospice in Galion will offer a place where those conversations can be spoken aloud. The organization will dedicate a new Wind Phone on Tuesday, September 22, during a ribbon cutting from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM at its 1220 N. Market Street location. The Crawford County Chamber of Commerce describes the Wind Phone as a space created for people grieving the loss of a loved one, allowing visitors to share thoughts, memories and messages with those they miss. The entire community is invited to Tuesday’s dedication.
A Telephone That Goes Nowhere
The idea behind a Wind Phone is strikingly simple. The telephone is not connected to another telephone. There is no person waiting on the other end. Instead, someone picks up the receiver and talks to a person who has died.
The ritual began more than 6,000 miles from Galion. In December 2010, Japanese garden designer Itaru Sasaki placed an old rotary telephone inside a glass-paneled booth in his garden in Ōtsuchi, a coastal community in northeastern Japan. Sasaki had lost a cousin to cancer and wanted a place where he could continue talking to him. He called it kaze no denwa, generally translated as the Wind Phone. Three months later, the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern Japan. Around 1,400 people were lost in Ōtsuchi alone. Sasaki opened his garden to others who were grieving.
In the years since, more than 30,000 people have visited the original Wind Phone, and versions of the idea have appeared in gardens, parks, hospice grounds and other quiet spaces around the world.
A Natural Home in Galion
For Avita Home Health & Hospice, the idea fits into work that has long extended beyond medical care. The Galion property already includes a Healing & Memorial Garden intended as a peaceful place for patients, families and visitors to meditate, gather their thoughts and remember loved ones. Memorial bricks and pavers are installed in a walkway surrounding a gazebo, with benches and trees also available as memorial gifts.
The addition of a Wind Phone creates another form of remembrance, one centered not on an inscription but on a conversation. Unlike a memorial marker, the phone invites participation. A visitor can pick up the receiver and speak. There does not have to be a prepared message or even much of a message at all. The significance is in having somewhere to say it.
A Space for the Words That Remain
Hospice care frequently continues in a different form after a death, as families move from caregiving into bereavement. Avita has incorporated remembrance into its hospice work through its memorial garden and other programs supporting patients and families. The Wind Phone extends that idea into something unusually tangible. A telephone is an everyday object associated with conversation. Most people have instinctively reached for one to tell someone important news, ask a question or simply hear a familiar voice. After a death, that instinct can remain even when the person who once answered is no longer there.
The Wind Phone does not attempt to change that reality. Its telephone line deliberately leads nowhere. Instead, it offers somewhere for the words to go.
Tuesday’s ribbon cutting is scheduled for 3:00 PM at Avita Home Health & Hospice, 1220 N. Market Street in Galion. The ceremony is open to the public.
Image by Andre Schützenhofer from Pixabay