10 July 2025
Twenty years ago Bob Wainhouse made a promise to a friend. She was being cared for at Mercy Hospice and every lunchtime a pianist would come in to play classical music.
“It was lovely, but Kirsten liked music that was livelier. She said, ‘Promise me that one day you’ll get your butt up to hospice and play something that puts a smile on people’s faces,” Bob says.
Twelve years later, Bob, from Albany, did just that, after retiring from his job in insurance risk management.
Bob plays the piano at Harbour Hospice’s Day Group sessions for patients and their carers and this month he’ll be recognised at Hospice’s Long Service Awards for 15 years’ service. He plays a little bit of everything at Day Group, from Rod Stewart to the Beatles to tunes from popular musicals. He takes requests and nothing makes him happier than seeing patients and their carers get up for a dance, or sing along.
“Music can evoke a lot of memories,” he says. “It can take people back to different places or different times, or remind them of a certain person. I feel very humbled to be in a position where I can help transport patients to those people and places.”
Music has always been a big part of Bob’s life. “School was never really for me, and I was always getting the strap or writing lines. One day the music teacher said, ‘Why don’t you come with me instead of writing lines – there’s a concert coming up that you can play in’, and from that day on I spent my punishment time in the music room.”
Bob spent a lot of time on the piano at home, and his father was the organist and choir master at the Holy Trinity church in Devonport for several years, so Bob also learned to play the big church pipe organ and would charge 10 shillings to play at people’s weddings.
At 18 he was lucky enough to begin having lessons from esteemed Welsh pianist and composer, Llewelyn Jones. “I learned such a lot from him, and we would always have so much fun,” Bob says. “We would begin the lesson by listening to the radio until we found a song that we both liked, then the lesson would be focussed on mastering that song. We only played by ear and the rules were that the tune had to be played in three different keys and three different tempos. I would always leave with tears running down my cheeks from all the laughing.”
With 15 years of entertaining hospice patients behind him, there are certain songs that now remind Bob of those patients. “There was one lady who loved Silent Night, and when I went in one Christmas and played that carol she came up to me afterwards and said, ‘I’ve been waiting for you to play that.’ She gave me a Christmas tree decoration that had the words Silent Night scrolled on it. I still put that decoration on the tree every year and it always makes me think of her. Over the years there have been some very touching moments like that.”
If you’d like to volunteer for Harbour Hospice or have a skill you could share, please email volunteer@harbourhospice.org.nz.
