'Murderous Neglectus'

I took a trip to Kerry over the 12th to see an ex who needed her piano tuned. At the minute she’s staying in a little town called Kenmare after coming back from traipsing round Europe. I met the ex 4 years ago and we went out for three months before she went off travelling. I met her at the stone circle there. I was tripping on magic mushrooms when she came along. I was standing in the middle of the circle trying to catch sight of some ancient druid spirit imprints using the sharply rendered seeing of psilocybin. I did catch momentarily some fleeting figures smudge my peripheral vision. Then she came through the undulations. She was called Megan and she was from Indiana. She was a photographer and took a couple of snaps of me. She was travelling through the ring of Kerry and thinking of using it as a ‘springboard’, that was the word she used, to travel Europe. She was working as she went. Here in Kenmare there was an aunty of hers that owned a big house. Her children had left home and not long after this her husband retired. 3 weeks into his retirement the pair took a cruise and he suffered a quick severe stroke while standing admiring the view of the Med’ from their room balcony. Now the aunt has to look after the uncle 24/7 and Megan helped out when she could when she moved in.

All the talk of assisted suicide in the news had got Megan thinking on a thing she’d noticed with her aunt the last month or so. Her uncle with his stroke was limited to a strict-ish diet. He was allowed limited starch and fat and was allowed no alcohol. Megan told me the aunt gives her uncle 2 rashers on a Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday night. She allowed him a pint of Guinness on Saturday night too. The doctors have upped his dose of special stroke tablets. Megan is concerned. While hardly knowing the aunt and uncle before leaving Indiana she has grown to like them in the last 6 of months. But she is concerned about her uncle’s health and her aunt’s warped behaviour. She says her aunt knows what she is doing. That she is not giving him all these forbidden things unconsciously. She thinks he is keeping some sort of log of how much fat and starch is in his diet presently. A sort of murder, she describes it as. She asks if there was a possibility that, if her uncle died as a result of this dangerous diet laid on by her aunt, if she would be done, if his death could be established as being as a direct result of this diet and if she would be charged with murder/manslaughter/criminal neglect. I said I didn’t know, but wondered to myself how many of these protracted drawing room murders take place in the world. How many people carefully and shrewdly knock off their burdensome spouse when they get to be too much hassle through neglect, poisoning etc. as I know nothing of Latin and less of the law I’ll call this phenomenon ‘Murderous Neglectus’.