Later in two nursing homes I saw that isolation was common, despite the good efforts of management and staff, and it struck me that there is a special callousness about being isolated in the last few years of life. COVID didn't help, but in most cases, I think, the COVID restrictions made little difference to those mostly alone.

My mother's isolation had begun a couple of years before she went to an aged-care hostel, and that was with the loss of her small car, in an accident that was not her fault. Had she been younger we would have replaced the car but it was high time she stopped driving.

She fought to stay connected with the world, and when my wife and I weren't around to drive her once and occasionally twice a week to Westfield Kotara she'd catch taxis, and there, frail and bent behind her walker, she'd shop. Not for groceries, because we or paid helpers organised those, but for bargains to put away as birthday or Christmas gifts, and if it came from David Jones it was very special.

Her pleasure in finding a gift for a family member gave her face a shine, and the thought mattered more than usual because the gifts were never as valued today as they were close to a century ago. Handkerchiefs, long socks, children's leather shoes, bath salts, and she could barely contain her excitement when she found bottles of fragrances for men on clearance. I could never bring myself to tell her that I didn't move in fragrant circles.

Later she'd tell us about the people who exchanged a few words with her during her Westfield excursion, about the lovely young woman who delivered the pot of tea to her table, and we are still grateful that the cafes turned a blind eye to the cup cake she'd buy elsewhere.

We could see that the day was coming but that didn't make it any less sad when she told us she was not up to going to the shopping centre again. That she'd fought so hard to keep going made it sadder, and as suddenly as that her isolation tightened.

Apart from Sunday visits to our home she was confined to her own. My wife and I would visit, usually separately so she'd have two visits, and occasionally a grandchild would visit, and each time she'd be sitting in the same chair. Her days were mostly long hours of solitude, and her loss of hearing discouraged her from watching TV or using the phone.

Diminished hearing was the most disconnecting issue. At family gatherings, in a room with any sort of background noise, she could not readily distinguish an individual's speech, even when she'd managed to turn her hearing aids on. I'd long thought that loss of sight would be the greatest sensory loss, but I think now that late in life loss of hearing has the greatest impact.

When she went into a nursing home after a sudden illness and the loss of almost all her sight she perked up. There were happenings, and each of the three meals a day in the dining room was an event. There was morning tea in the communal room, and people she could exchange a few words with even if she couldn't hear them, and my mother looked forward to the weekly bus trip of a few hours even though she couldn't see a thing beyond the window.

It was difficult persuading our children who lived nearby to visit, and I understand that for them visiting grandma in the nursing home could be distressing and, yes, going to a nursing home does not fit easily into a busy week. When a son and his partner and their daughter, a great granddaughter my mother saw as especially delightful, visited, Mum seemed to know that she would not see them again. Then the days grew long again. She was isolated from her family, and COVID restrictions were not the only reason. Her daughter, two grandchildren and five great grandchildren live in another state, and she realised she would not see most of them again.

COVID shut the door to almost all her family. Often before COVID I'd take one of her small great grandchildren with me when visiting, and the toddler's presence seemed to lift everyone's spirit, but suddenly children were banned. She'd grill my wife and me for every skerrick of news about the small children and their parents, and I admit that sometimes I'd invent a newsy morsel or two.

Some others in the nursing home were more isolated, because of dementia or the absence of family. For the first time in my life I could see up close the loneliness of old age, and for the first time in my life I saw unrelenting isolation. Staff members told me that some of the elderly people had no visitors, and on one of my last visits to the home one of those elderly people took me into her room to show me very proudly photos of her family members. She hadn't seen any of them for years.

There is an aspect of my mother's isolation that I believe is particularly relevant. Mum never visited her grandchildren, because she had an old fashioned fear of imposing. She would drive slowly past their homes, to check quietly on the renovations or whatever, but she would never call in without a specific rather than a general invitation. This formality and reticence seemed to create a distance of more than one generation between her and her grandchildren, and when she was confined there was no established visiting pattern or easy familiarity.

Loss of hearing was my mother's most isolating misfortune, but a fear of imposing on her adult grandchildren was another of significance.

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