Visiting the elderly

in aged care facilities  is one of those things I am not doing at present. I will also confess that it is not one of those things I enjoy. It is too much of a reminder that I too am getting "old" - at least in the physical sense. I hope I manage to retain the Senior Cat's sense of wonder about the world around me all my life too.
I do not like prowling in to see much older friends who are now bewildered, lost, lonely, missing their gardens, and generally missing the freedom to come and go as they would like. 
I think I have said elsewhere that about 70% of people in aged care do not get any visitors. This is why I go. I go to see not just the people I know but to say "hello", however briefly, to other people as well.  Some don't want to of course but others welcome a few minutes chat. 
Right now those in charge of such places have said "no visitors". I can understand the reasoning behind the edict but it also worries me. I know all too well that unless people get visitors some of them will be neglected. They won't be cared for at all.  They will be called "difficult" and, as far as possible, they will be ignored. 
It isn't that all the staff don't care about them because there are staff in such places who love their work and would like to spend more time with each resident. That this does not happen is due to staffing levels and the idea that such facilities are supposed to make a profit for the owners or, at very least, be cost effective. 
Good care will always cost more than that. 
So right now I worry about whether the people I know in such places are being adequately cared for or whether they need small pieces of shopping done, a pair of trousers dry-cleaned, another tube of hand cream,  or their favourite fishing magazine. Are they getting all the physical care they need? 
I know it isn't my job. All too often their children should be doing this but they are "busy" or they live elsewhere. There are other excuses too. The neighbours who said they would visit haven't been at all even though  the resident helped with baby sitting, mending the fence or collecting mail and watering the garden when they went on holiday.
"Social isolation" has made it even easier to ignore the elderly in nursing homes. As I am not a relative the staff aren't going to make any effort to bring someone to the window so we can talk. I just have to hope that my friends are being well cared for.
Perhaps they are because yesterday one of the senior staff in one home phoned me to say that someone of 101 had "passed peacefully in her sleep". 
    "I just thought you would like to know because you were the last visitor she had. She was holding the new lavender sachet you sent in for her." She loved lavender. For years she gave me lavender from her garden.  I was simply giving her what she had so often given me.
There won't be a funeral. She never married. She had no family left here. I just wish I had been able to see her once more. It is one of those things I hate about  this social isolation.