Cockeysville mom wants to build a wind phone in Oregon Ridge to help families grieve

The kids were young when their father, Brian Barwick, died suddenly at age 40 in 2023. Stella was 7, and Wesley was a few weeks away from turning 5. Each took to mourning in their own way, said their mom, Bayley Barwick.

While Wesley could barely bring himself to talk about his dad, let alone look at pictures, Stella wanted to hold on to everything: the pictures, the clothing, the rest of his belongings. Still, it was difficult for Barwick to help them. Both grieved so differently.

Often, though, all Wesley and Stella, now 7 and 9, wanted to do was talk to their dad. He had been cremated, and they held onto small urns their grandmother had given them. They made memory boxes and even put up a plaque and fairy lights in the backyard of their Cockeysville home, but that still wasn’t enough.

“Not having a place to go visit him was very challenging,” said Barwick, 40.

This past spring, Barwick saw something on TikTok about wind phones — disconnected phone booths often found outdoors where people “call” a deceased loved one — and suggested to the kids that they visit one on Father’s Day.

The closest wind phone was over an hour away at Reflection Park, an eco-friendly burial ground in Silver Spring. When they got there, Stella rushed to the little wooden phone booth, told her mother and brother to give her some space, and started talking right away.

“Immediately, you could see her start crying. It just broke me watching her,” Barwick said. Then her son went, thinking at first that his dad would answer at the other end of the line. “I said, ‘No, bud. You just talk to him. Tell him all the things that have happened. Tell him how first grade was. How baseball was. Just tell him things that have happened.’”

Barwick didn’t know what to expect. “I was like, ‘How can this phone really do something like that?’ But when I saw the reactions — it makes me cry just thinking about it," she said. “But in my head, I’m like, ‘Well, this isn’t really doable all the time, to drive an hour away and visit this wind phone to talk to him. How can I do this here?’”

The first wind phone was installed in Japan by garden designer Itaru Sasaki, who had put one in his backyard to speak to his deceased cousin. After the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, he offered it to neighbors who needed a place to mourn.

He called it a wind telephone because he wanted his thoughts to be “carried on the wind,” he said in a 2017 episode of “This American Life.” The idea has since expanded: the website My Wind Phone, which tracks them globally, lists 437 in the United States, 130 in Canada, and almost 60 in the rest of the world.

‘Grief is just not talked about’

One in 11 children in Maryland will experience the death of a sibling or parent by the time they turn 18, according to the Childhood Bereavement Estimate Model by Judi’s House and the JAG Institute, a center that provides grief care, including counseling and workshops, to children and families in Colorado.

“Children don’t grieve in a single moment in their lives; they’re grieving throughout their lifetime,” said Joyce Baker, the director of the Counseling Center at the Stella Maris nursing home in Timonium. Each milestone brings a new wave of grief, she said, and it’s essential to meet children where they are, whether in a group with other bereaved children or in therapy.

“The wind phone is just such a wonderful thing for these children to be able to use it in any way they need it,” she said.

It’s not just children who can benefit from wind phones, said Jessica Correnti, who counsels bereaved children and families through her organization Kids Grief Support. “It’s giving people the space to just be wherever they are without having this fear of an audience, and giving them the dedicated space to take a deep breath, to be where they are and to connect — not only with their person who died, but with themselves as well.”

Barwick thought the best place for a wind phone close to their home was at Oregon Ridge Nature Center in Cockeysville. She called and asked about setting one up there but was rebuffed, she said. She followed up with a written request and set up a Change.org petition, which has received 671 signatures. Park officials later said that she is welcome to submit a proposal.

“Grief is just not talked about so much,” Barwick said. “I feel like people feel alone in their grief.” She has gotten support from dozens of people; one said on Facebook that “as a person who lost my father at the age of 10, I love this idea and appreciate you sharing it.”

Barwick contacted Olivia Chao Delfert, the founder of the Little Wind Phone Project, who had set up the wind phone in Silver Spring earlier this year. Chao Delfert, who lives in Rockville, helped install a wind phone in the Kentlands neighborhood of Gaithersburg. Chao Delfert said she also is working with people to install wind phones in Virginia, Connecticut and Michigan.

If officials at Oregon Ridge approve the wind phone, Barwick and Chao Delfert will research how to pay for it. The Little Wind Phone Project offers two wind phone models, for which the organization crowdsources funding for building and setup. One is a $400 compact structure made of wood with space for just the phone. The other, which costs $600, is a slightly larger wooden booth with space for a plaque or notebook.

On a hot and sticky afternoon in mid-July, Barwick, Stella and Wesley visited the Oregon Ridge Nature Center to find the perfect spot for a wind phone.

There were some good contenders: One was a semi-shady spot overlooking a small lake, with trees and a bench. Another was a bit farther down on another path by a small stream the kids knew well. Both spots were meaningful, Stella said: “It brings back a lot of memories from when me and my dad used to come here a lot.”

As they looked for raspberry bushes, Wesley and Stella pointed to spots that reminded them of their dad.

The kids said that one of their favorite things to do with him was visit Oregon Ridge. They would stand in a stream and watch their dad pick out crawfish with his hands.

Wesley said he couldn’t decide how often he’d want to visit the wind phone. He also didn’t know what he’d say to his dad.

Stella was more sure.

“I would want to say that I love him and miss him,” she said. She also knew what he would say back: “He would probably say, ‘You did a really good job and I’m really proud of you.’”