North Memorial Health Volunteer Learns Piano To Soothe Hospital Visitors
People come to hospitals for a variety of reasons: work, medical emergencies or to visit loved-ones.
Richard Olson aims to make those hospital trips better by playing the piano.
“I play an improvisational style that is pretty much mine,” said Olson, a volunteer at North Memorial Health – Robbinsdale Hospital.
Every Thursday and Sunday, you’ll find Olson in the atrium of North Memorial, pressing on the keys and filling the halls with a sound that’s uniquely his.
Olson is an electronic technician by trade who plays the piano as a hobby.
“He is sprinkling in joy into our environment,” said Kerry Appleton, North Memorial’s director of workforce well-being.
Appleton said Olson has provided a much-needed service since he began volunteering at the hospital in January.
“We know that music does make a big difference in environment,” Appleton said. “It can help with fatigue. It can help with overall state of relaxation and giving people the ability to focus.”
Richard Olson plays the piano at North Memorial Health – Robbinsdale Hospital on Thursdays and Sundays.
But passersby aren’t the only ones reaping the benefits. Olson’s wife, Carol Watson, was a long-term patient at North Memorial.
“I would come visit her twice a day, and there was this piano just sitting there every time I came in the door,” Olson said.
Olson lost his wife in September, but there was something inside of him that said he needed to come back to play that piano.
“I did not process the pain and the grief then. I kinda stored it,” Olson said. “And now when I play, I am taking that discomfort, pain, grief, angst, whatever, and I put it through me and my fingers into the piano, and the hammers and the strings, and turn it into something higher.”
People process grief in many different ways. For Olson, his therapy session happens to take place in a Robbinsdale atrium for all to appreciate.
“That’s pretty awesome that people can give that gift to the world,” Appleton said.
Now that Olson is playing consistently, he says he’d like to get better. He just started taking piano lessons at the age of 70.
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