My mother died in my home in hospice in 2020, on the day my state of Washington went into COVID-19 lockdown. Her body was taken away, but none of the usual touchstones for grief were available to our family. There was no funeral or supportive gathering, no deliveries of food and no hugs. For months afterward, as the nationwide lockdown continued, thousands of other families like mine saw these death rituals – society’s social supports for grieving – stripped away.
As a clinical social worker and health scholar with 40 years of experience in end-of-life care and bereavement, I knew that I needed some way to tend to my grief for my mother. While in lockdown, I began looking for resources to help me. Then I heard about the wind phone.
My mother died in my home in hospice in 2020, on the day my state of Washington went into COVID-19 lockdown. Her body was taken away, but none of the usual touchstones for grief were available to our family. There was no funeral or supportive gathering, no deliveries of food and no hugs. For months afterward, as the nationwide lockdown continued, thousands of other families like mine saw these death rituals – society’s social supports for grieving – stripped away.
As a clinical social worker and health scholar with 40 years of experience in end-of-life care and bereavement, I knew that I needed some way to tend to my grief for my mother. While in lockdown, I began looking for resources to help me. Then I heard about the wind phone.
One of the wind phones is in Olympia, Washington.
What is a wind phone?
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. Wind phones offer a setting for the person to tell the story of their grief, to reminiscence and to continue to connect to the person who is gone. For many, it is a deeply moving, life-affirming experience.
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