The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World is a novel written by Imai Messina about a woman named Yui. Yui lost both her mother and daughter due to the 2011 Japanese tsunami. She hears about a disconnected “wind phone” where people converse with deceased loved ones in a man’s backyard, and many travel miles to visit. Eventually, she decides to make her own pilgrimage down to the strange phone booth. Yui, still struggling with the loss, can’t find the courage to speak into the receiver. She meets Takeshi, a widower whose daughter stopped speaking after he mothers death, leading to a story of shared recovery. The book is inspired by a real, non-functional phone booth in Otsuchi, Japan.
Yui and Takeshi gradually realized that the Wind Phone was like a verb that conjugated differently for each person: everybody’s grief looked the same at first, but was, ultimately, unique. (p.70)
This quotation is saying that grief is a shared human experience, but it is also deeply personal. It may seem similar on the surface, but it “conjugates” differently for every individual, shaped by their memories, personality, and relationship with the person they lost. I chose this quotation because it says in a really beautiful way that pain can connect us, but that it also belongs uniquely to each of us.