The Wind Phone
I knew my friend Christian was dying. He’d had COPD for a few years. To begin with, he just seemed a bit less fit than he was. Then he’d ask me to slow down when we walked uphill, so he could catch his breath.
Back then, I was still in denial that he was seriously ill - he seemed pretty well. But his diagnosis was “terminal”.
Soon he wasn’t well enough to travel to visit so I’d meet him at his favourite cafes instead. Then he needed his portable oxygen just to get to the cafe. Then he wasn’t able to leave the house at all.
The last time I saw him, I didn’t know it was the last time, even though he was much more seriously ill. After a lovely afternoon in his garden, so beautifully tended by his wife, and the constant hum of the now 24/7 oxygen machine, we’d made arrangements for me to visit again in a few weeks. He called out “I love you” as I left. For some reason, I didn’t say it back - maybe just wanting to avoid the cliche and automaticity.
But I never had the opportunity again, because Christian died before my return visit.
When his son phoned to tell me he’d died, I felt such a mixture of sadness, relief (that he was out of pain and such discomfort), regret and self-recrimination. Why hadn’t I been more present to the seriousness of his condition? Why hadn’t I known or guessed it might be the last time I’d see him? Why hadn’t I said “I love you too - thank you for being such a supportive, funny and generous friend”?
As soon as I could, I took myself through my own 7-step Forgiveness process. I went out to the hills we’d walked when he was well and I spoke out loud to him. This process is, an active imagination, inner journey where you can have conversations with anyone, living or dead. You can clear the air, you can explain yourself, apologise, you can right wrongs, you can say the things you wish you’d said and take back the things you wish you hadn’t.
In this imaginary conversation with Christian, I did all of that. I told him how much I appreciated him and how sorry I was that I hadn’t said it enough, out loud when he could hear it. I told him I loved him - of course!
In my imagination, he was as light and as cheesily funny as he was in life, and totally forgiving of my omission - he said he didn’t need to hear me say it - he knew by how our friendship had been over the past 25 years and by my actions in his dying days.
And that process felt like a completion for me, a release and relief - an opportunity to make peace inside myself.
When we say “may they rest in peace” - there’s also a need for inner peace for the living ones as we journey with our grief.
Without regret, remorse and recriminations, somehow, the grief of Christian’s death seemed “simplified”, even lighter and perhaps became a little easier to bear.
* - The "Wind Phone" (kaze no denwa) in Ōtsuchi, Japan, is a disconnected rotary phone booth located in Bell Gardia, designed to help people process grief. Created by Itaru Sasaki to connect with his deceased cousin, it became a public sanctuary after the 2011 tsunami, allowing visitors to "speak" to lost loved ones carried on the wind.