Is there anyone out there?

On Saturday morning,  we listened to a podcast, having (thanks to M and T ) finally discovered this rich and exciting medium that will transform our car journeys to and from the boat from now on. 

It was about a Japanese man who lived on the east coast of Japan, the bit that was destroyed in the tsunami, with countless family and neighbours lost, houses destroyed, whole villages and fishing and farming communities flattened, thousands still unaccounted for. 

Each nationality has its own stereotypes, we Brits hate complaining about substandard meals and love queuing, and the Japanese are known for their excruciating politeness, reserve and formality. And this is what made this story even more astonishing. 

It is impossible to imagine what it must be like to live through a disaster of this magnitude when your immediate world and all you hold dear is swallowed up by the sea. Familiar landmarks, trees, hedges, temples, school buildings, blocks of flats, car parks, shops, houses, farms, all gone. Families wiped off the face of the earth, leaving those who managed to survive with a lifetime of lonely wondering.

This man was a farmer and had lost his wife of many years. With no closure, no body, no grave, no headstone, no funeral service, and no answers,  he was frozen in a dreadful rigid grief.

So he did something very ordinary, but extraordinary.

He got hold of an old phone booth and put it at the bottom of his garden.

Over the next couple of weeks he got into the habit of going into the phone booth, and after dialling his home phone number began to talk to his dead wife. Gradually other people started to come to his garden and doing the same, calling  to their missing parents,husbands and wives,  brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts, telling them  about mundane everyday things, like starting high school, buying new clothes, how the kids were doing, reassuring their loved ones that they were doing ok, how much they were missed, apologies for petty previous arguments and for not having said goodbye, worries that the disappeared would be cold or not be able to find their way home as home no longer existed. The very ordinariness of their conversations made it even more heartbreaking. 

One in particular was the fifteen year old boy whose father had been a long distance lorry driver, presumed drowned as he had never returned from a job that had taken him up the coast on the fateful day. One day this boy got on a bus and travelled for four hours from his home town and arrived at the phone booth in the garden where he picked up the phone and talked to his dad, telling him about the latest baseball game and how his studies were going. ” Keep warm” he said into the receiver before replacing it and heading off for the long journey home 

A month later he returned, this time bringing his mother and younger siblings with him. Giggling nervously, they huddled around the booth, each pushing the others to go in first. Gradually one by one they went in, lifted the receiver and dialled. His younger sister had never once mentioned her dead father since his disappearance. Hesitantly she approached the booth and as she picked up the receiver started to whisper and then to cry, the words bubbling out between the heaving sobs,  as for the first time she allowed herself to weep for her loss , telling her dad how she missed him. Her mother followed,  and it was almost as if she was talking to her husband around the kitchen table, that familiar, comforting family kind of chat that you have with your partner at the end of the day , when you are talking about nothing particular other than the latest gossip or the colour of the new sofa you want to buy. Afterwards, the whole family hugged, and cried together, something that they had not done before. 

The very idea, and the fact that someone can so easily allow themselves to slip into an imaginary world, to pretend  that they are actually speaking to a loved one, even though there is nobody on the other end of the line may seem strange,  but it is also incredibly beautiful and healing. And a license to say all the things that have been unspoken and buried through intense grief and pain. 

 From time to time after T died I would  ring our land line so I could hear his voice on the answering machine. And even  though I knew he would never hear it I would sometimes leave him a message just to tell him how we   were. 

Keep warm.