A balm for the bereaved: Geneva woman seeks to install wind phone where grieving people can ‘talk’ to lost loved ones

After her son died four years ago, Elaine Haughan kept his cellphone and continued to pay the bill.

“I would find myself texting him on his birthday or if something exciting happened in my life,” said Haughan, a mother of four whose son James died suddenly of cardiac arrest on June 4, 2021, about a month shy of his 19th birthday.

“It was nice to be able to do that,” she said. “I wanted (the number) to be active and not be reassigned to someone else.”

Recently the Geneva resident — who lost her husband Michael in 2019 — uncovered another way to talk to her late son: The wind phone. It’s a disconnected rotary phone grieving people “call” their dearly departed. She hopes to establish one in Geneva in memory of James, a Geneva High School graduate and aspiring voice actor described as an all-around good guy.

“He was one of those guys who would be there for you whenever you needed,” Haughan said.

Haughan got the idea for a wind phone from a story on social media about a California couple who lost their two children to a drunken driver and established a wind phone in their honor in Joshua Tree National Park.

“As I read it, I got this warmth in my chest,” said Haughan, who researched the My Wind Phone website at mywindphone.com for ideas of how to establish one.

“It's such a good tool for dealing with grief,” she said. “There's not a single person on this planet who hasn't had to deal with grief and could use this tool to help them.”

Japanese landscape designer Itaru Sasaki created the first wind phone in 2010 to channel his grief over his cousin's death. In 2011, after an earthquake and tsunami killed nearly 20,000 people in Japan, he made the phone available to the public. Since then, people have built them all over the world, including in Illinois, which has wind phones in Arlington Heights, Blue Mount, Decatur, East Moline, Evanston, Galesburg and Prairie Grove.

Haughan wants to add Geneva to that list. She kicked off her efforts by writing to city officials and contacting representatives from the Geneva Park District and Forest Preserve District of Kane County to elicit support. The proposed project is in its preliminary stages, said Haughan.

Haughan has neither a design nor a location for the phone, but ideally it would be located in an accessible but private spot, perhaps in a park or forest preserve.

“If you're overcome with grief and you're crying, you don't want to be too close to a trail where you could be heard,” she said.

Wind phones in Evanston and Arlington Heights are so situated. Evanston’s is near the 11th hole of The Evans at Canal Shores Golf Course. The Arlington Heights wind phone stands outside the Arlington Heights Memorial Library in the butterfly garden.

The library established it last year in conjunction with its One Book, One Village initiative. The library selected “The Collected Regrets of Clover,” a novel by Mikki Brammer about a death doula who helps people through the end-of-life process. In addition to hosting group discussions and related activities, the library installed the wind phone.

“The library is always looking for ways to connect with the community and bring the community together,” said marketing and communications director Sasha Vasilic.

“It was a concept we found fascinating,” he said, and the interactive component was something new for the community.

Nearly a year after its installation, people still make “calls” on the rotary phone, purchased online for a minimal cost, and housed in a box constructed from repurposed materials.

Haughan says she received positive feedback to her wind phone proposal.

“It's heartwarming for me to know that even though people don't know me … they're still in my corner,” she said. “They're offering suggestions, they're offering support. They want to help.”

Dr. Paul M. Martin, clinical psychologist and assistant director for The Center for Grief Recovery in Chicago, says “talking” on a wind phone can help some people navigate the grieving process in a healthy way.

Broadly, healthy mourning involves the bereaved person being “willing to confront the reality of the loss; acknowledge and express the variety emotions they feel and then do whatever they need to do to adapt to everything about their life that has changed as a result of that loss,” Martin said.

In his book “Personal Grief Rituals: Creating Unique Expressions of Loss and Meaningful Acts of Mourning,” Martin examines how people can create “expressions of mourning” specific to their psychological and emotional needs. A wind phone conversation could be one such expression.

Martin references the “continuing bonds theory” which posits that maintaining an “illusory sense of connection to the person who has been lost” can be a crucial part of the mourning process. Activities — including using a wind phone — can “allow a person to derive a sense of comfort from doing things that make it feel like this person is here in spirit,” and that can be helpful, he added.

That said, it may not help everyone, according to Martin, explaining that bereaved people who had a fraught or unhealthy relationship with the deceased may not benefit.

“Some people need more emotional expression, but not everybody,” he said. “Some people are going to benefit from continuing bonds, some people would benefit from going to a wind phone, some people would benefit from not doing this.”

Ultimately, people get through their grief by processing what happened, expressing emotions and figuring out how to adapt, Martin said, and that looks different for everyone.

“There is no one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with grief,” he said.