What is something that can cheer up a depressed elderly person?

Need to spend time. Get her to talk about her younger days and see what she liked to do back then. Some like to go to a drive in restaurant and order a meal and eat like the younger years. Or go for a country drive and let her see some new scenery especially good when everything has greened up and is pretty in the spring-summer. It’s better than sitting inside the house day in and day out with walls closing in. Getting out to sit in the cool of the day, morning or evening, and enjoying some time out there with a drink and a talk is good too. Anything to get her out of her rut. Music, if she has a favorite kind, might help. She needs to get her mind off of herself too, if there is anything at all she can do to help other, some kind of creative thing even sending a card to someone who is sick or a letter or a birthday card to someone who is getting up there in age. A couple years ago I posted a story about a Veteran in a nursing home in another state who was turning 100, his daughter said he liked to receive cards. Several people here sent them to him (he got 100,00+)… things such as this. And fun little things she could enjoy….puzzles, games, playing cards etc.

John Olinger?

She has the same problems the ex had when he first became disabled with a weird disease that caused his hands and feet to swell up.

I used to piss him off royally, because I used to tell him that he was not DIS-abled, that he was now DIFFERENTLY abled. It might make her angry, too, but she does need to begin to think about what she CAN do, instead of what she CAN'T.

I have severe arthritis in my lower back, for example, and I can't STAND at the kitchen sink and wash dishes by hand, (don't have a dishwasher anymore), but I can SIT in my office chair, if I roll it over there, and still wash the dishes.

What you can do with her that might take her mind off things is figure out some practical fixes that will allow her to do SOME the things she loves. My Aunt, (now deceased), spent the last 20 years of her life in a wheelchair, yet she would lower herself down to the ground and plant flowers, and take care of her garden. There are low rolling carts she could have used, too.

Anyway...it might be that there are cognitive and behavioral fixes to a LOT of what she now perceives as impossible for her.

Try a walk down the streets with her.Visit her often and make her feel cared.

Is there a board game or something you can do together? I sometimes get weighed down by empathising with people who have lost most of their friends and are close to death themselves. But Scrabble usually helps to pass the time and lighten the mood 🙂

A nice walk in gardens? If she's able?
Or if you can think of anything shes able to do now that you could both do together?
Tough seeing your loved ones getting older x

Do you know what she enjoys? What about some kind of art project you could do together? Art can be really therapeutic and most people seem to enjoy it 💙

Something easy like a glass mosaic project, or needlepoint of some kind, or even painting simple things like flowers