All the understated ways that people are

Saying I love you, I miss you,

I’m doing my very best,

Don’t worry about us.

Miki Meek, NPR

 

I’ve read that concentrating on that which you wish to dream while sleeping will deliver contents as requested.  Wishing my Mom to appear got me nowhere, but I wasn’t surprised about that as I carry her around with me most days. The best I could muster from Dad was a nighttime sequence wherein he was on a downward moving walkway carrying him fast and farther away despite my shouts to step off of it…come back! He was hard of hearing in life and rather spacey at the end, so who knows.

 

About a month ago, I came across a recently released book now translated into English titled “The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World”. The Italian author, Laura Imai Messina, earned a PhD from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and lives in Japan with her husband and children. This novel was based on the actual Japanese Wind Phone in Otsuchi, a seaside town decimated by the March, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.  At least 19,000 people perished in the disaster.

 

Itaru Sasaki created the booth in his garden in 2010 when his cousin died.  After the 2011 tragedy, he opened it up to the public.  Tens of thousands of people have since visited the booth with its disconnected phone that allows those who lost loved ones, for whatever reason, to pour out their feelings through the phone and into the wind.  That’s so much better than wishing for cameo dream appearances!

 

I just finished the book, an excellent love story filled with loss and hope and beautifully written. I’d also recommend “Ghosts of the Tsunami: death and life in Japan’s disaster zone.”