HILLSBORO BEACH, Fla. – Lost loved ones are just a phone call away, because of a simple idea that is now helping so many people.
An old-style red rotary phone sits in a booth not far from the Atlantic Ocean in Hillsboro Beach.
It’s called a wind phone, and it’s not an ordinary telephone.
It is for people who are grieving after the death of a loved one.
They can pick up the wind phone and reach out and talk to family members or close friends who have passed away.
Claudine Mourjan got permission to place a wind phone in Hillsboro Beach after her son died in May 2020.
“You dial the number. It is a gesture that you are doing.” Mourjan said. “You can talk to your loved one, and the wind will carry your words. It is very important in the healing process.”
Mourjan says she uses the wind phone every single day to reach out to her son Ilan, who died from Fentanyl poisoning when he was 30-years-old.
“I dial my son’s number and I start to talking to him, because this what we miss the most, talking to our loved one.”
A man in Japan came up with the idea for the wind phone after his cousin died from cancer.
He set up an old telephone booth in his garden in 2010 to continue to feel connected to him by “talking” to him on the phone.
There are wind phones in many countries, but Mourjan says that the phone in Hillsboro Beach is the only one of its kind in South Florida.