Day of Service

A couple of weeks ago, our ward had a talent show, and I decided to play a piano piece by Rachmaninoff that I played in my senior recital four years ago. The next Sunday, a brother from our ward asked if I would like to play that piece and maybe one or two more at an assisted living center on the Day of Service, an event sponsored by the wards in our area in which several service projects were arranged in the community. I told him I would love to do that. Yesterday was the Day of Service. I went to the assisted living center thinking that the residents might appreciate having someone to visit, but wouldn't care too much about me playing the piano. When I walked in, the people I saw were mostly sitting in chairs with little expression on their faces. I guess you can't know for sure how much they're taking in, but I didn't feel like I was doing anything special when for all I knew these people weren't even aware that someone was playing music. But after I had played a couple of songs, the brother who had asked me to come told me that there was a lady who wanted to meet the person playing the piano. There was a sweet, bright-eyed woman with white hair sitting in an armchair, and she said she used to play the piano ("Beethoven, Mozart, Bach . . . I played all of those") and asked me to play some more songs. So I played a couple more, and then I went and talked to her again. She told me about how she would love to still play the piano, but she can't get onto the piano bench because it's not very stable and she has to use a walker. She also said that she had just been saying that she wished people would come sometimes and play classical music, and then I started playing, and she was so excited to hear someone playing classical music. I'm grateful that I was able to gladden someone's heart with my talents. Sometimes I have wondered if it was even worth it to learn to play the piano when I can't really practice regularly right now and the only benefit seems to be that occasionally I have some fun playing songs, but then I have experiences like this and I'm reminded that it was worthwhile, even if it was all just to bring a little sunshine to a little white-haired lady at a nursing home.