Wind Phones – The Line Isn’t Quite Dead

In March 2020, my patient died in her daughter's home under hospice care—on the very day Washington State went into COVID-19 lockdown. Her body was taken away quietly, and then… nothing. No funeral. No gathering of friends. No casseroles dropped off at the door. No hugs.

For months, as the lockdown stretched on, thousands of families like mine faced the same reality: the rituals that help us grieve—the shared meals, the embraces, the communal storytelling—were stripped away.

As a clinical social worker and health scholar with four decades of experience in end-of-life care her daughter understood grief on a professional level. But when it was her mom, she needed something more than theory. She needed a way to tend to her grief in isolation.

That’s when I learned about the wind phone and shared with her.

Imagine a simple phone—rotary or push-button—placed in a quiet spot outdoors, often inside a booth with a chair nearby. The phone isn’t connected to anything.

People visit these wind phones to “call” their loved ones who have died. It’s a one-way conversation, a chance to say what was left unsaid, to tell stories, to reminisce, to feel connected again.

For many, it’s a deeply moving, life-affirming experience.

Today, there are about 225 wind phones scattered across the U.S., usually in parks, along trails, or on church grounds. They’re free, open to the public, and often built by someone honoring a loved one.

The idea began in Japan in 2010. Itaru Sasaki, a garden designer grieving a relative, built a phone booth in his yard so he could “talk” to them. Months later, the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami killed more than 20,000 people. Sasaki opened his wind phone to neighbors, and soon, people traveled from across Japan to speak through the “phone of the wind.”

Since then, wind phones have quietly spread around the world.

In American culture, we often talk about “closure”—as if grief is something to finish and file away. But grief doesn’t work like that. Yes, the sharp pain softens over time, but waves of sadness can return years later, triggered by a smell, a song, or a memory.

To date, there’s no research on wind phones. We can’t say scientifically whether they help people cope. But the fact that they’ve multiplied so quickly suggests something important: people need ways to engage with grief.

And for thousands who have tried it, there is comfort in picking up that silent receiver and speaking into the wind.