A new contemplative space for grief has opened in Ballard’s Crown Hill Cemetery: Seattle’s first Sanctuary Wind Phone. The installation, created by the Grievers Library, provides a quiet place for visitors to “call” and speak privately to a loved one they’ve lost.
The wooden phone booth—designed and hand-built by local woodworker Wayne Myers—sits beneath a large cedar tree in the cemetery’s northwest corner. Inside is a vintage rotary phone, intentionally disconnected to allow space for reflection and imagined conversation. The installation is open daily from dawn to dusk.
The concept was inspired by the original wind phone in Otsuchi, Japan, created by a garden designer named Itaru Sasaki. He originally designed it to help him cope with his cousin’s death, but it was opened to the public after the 2011 tsunami as a way for people to process grief and loss.
Myers built the Crown Hill wind phone using reclaimed and donated materials for the structure, including the antique phone. He has also built eight of the Grievers Library’s signature grief literature boxes located throughout the city.
Alongside the permanent installation, the Grievers Library is launching a mobile version of the project. Through its new Wind Phone Lending Library, Seattle-area bereavement organizations will receive backpacks containing rotary phones to lend to individuals seeking a portable way to connect, whether at a gravesite, a beach, or another meaningful location…