My mother is elderly and bored. Her mind has outlived her body. She is bright, interested in things, can still do math and crossword puzzles. But...
She is frail, sitting upright on a hospital bed most of the time. She can walk very short distances, but it leaves her light-headed and breathless. She has partial vision in one eye, recognizes familiar visitors and does routine tasks. She can no longer read except with a magnifying glass. TV is mostly a blur. Her hearing aid allows her to converse if you speak clearly with a slightly raised voice. Some days she hears her amplified phone, other days not. She has trouble using and hearing a CD player.
She can knit, but she can no longer read the charts. She does crosswords with a magnifying glass, but can't use dictionaries.
Good ideas suggested so far include recording memoirs, arranging for visitors, pets, senior centers, and going through old pictures. I ended the old question to have points to offer you.
Anonymous2007-08-16T17:58:22Z
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I don't care about points. Have you considered having someone with a turntable & recording equipment burning a CD with the music from some old 78rpm records. The sound of those old scratchy records will sound like crap to you, but will bring back some fond memories for her...guaranteed. If she has some old ones packed away, ask her which were her favorites & have those recorded (burned) to a CD or a cassette take. It might cost you 50-150 dollars to have this done, but those old sounds will bring tears of joy to her eyes. Ahhh, the good old days when times were so much easier, yet so much harder in some ways! She's a lucky woman to have someone so thoughtful in her life. I wonder if I will be as lucky as she is! Losing your health is the worst part of growing old. Not having access to familiar objects is another.
All of the ideas I've seen so far have great merit and here's another.
Being frail brings a whole different set of lifestyle difficulties and there are a lot of things that cannot be done in the same way that they were.
Let me suggest this, my late Aunt loved this and she was extremely frail due to osteoporosis, among other things. The best thing that you probably can do for your Mom is get a light-weight wheelchair and get her out of the house and into the world around her. These wheelchairs are called Transport Wheelchairs and they cost quite a bit less than the conventional heavy ones. Or perhaps, you could find one at a yard sale or thrift store. You could line the seat with a blanket or a pillow to make it more comfortable for her.
Then, start an adventure. Go to a park, or to a mall, let her see people and hear them. Bearing in mind that her sight and hearing are impaired, she will still get something uplifting from the trip. If she's up to it, go get a milkshake or a sundae. Or how about a Hamburger. I took my Aunt to the Hairdresser in her wheelchair and stayed to help when she needed it. Mind you, she was 83 years old and weighed all of 97 lbs. soaking wet.
It's great that your Mom can still do most of her activities of daily living. This is a blessing in itself.
God bless you for taking such good care of your Mom.
I have heard pets are a wonderful idea as well. Maybe someone that has an interest in knitting as well, can visit her, talk to her about it, ask her questions, or ask if she has any ideas or helpful hints she can share. If she is a reader you might check into some books on tape. My thoughts and prayers are with you, and if I think of anything at all I'll post it here. Good Luck and give you Mother a big hug from a Texas Gal !!
Bless your mom & bless you for wanting to make your mom's life more enjoyable. Is it possible for someone to come to her home & read to her daily, such as the newspaper, Reader's Digest, etc. Would your mom enjoy going for a ride several times a week, just to get out of the house? I think your mom may enjoy visitors, especially if they can speak of the good old days. Does anyone from her church come to visit? Maybe they could keep her informed as to what's new within the church, in that respect. Is it possible for a beautician to visit your mom weekly to do her hair? When was the last time your mom received a floral bouquet? Perhaps someone coming to visit, could bring her some. You know more about all these things than I do, but these are just some ideas I have. All the best to your mom & you. :)
If you can afford it a laptop (or desktop) with a webcam can be used to show a magnified view of things. Mount the camera pointing down and she can put books under it to read enlarged on the screen.
You can get recorded books from many libraries , she could just listem to them instead of reading.
Some knitting charts you could maybe photocopy larger, it would take several pages for each page of the original pattern .