Slèinte Mhath (Slanj-a-va) – [Part 2 of 2 stories about this family]

 Cheers!

Arthur Campbell and his only surviving child, Alex, continued to live in the home the old man had bought many years previously. Having lost his wife to complications from the debilitating disease, diabetes, it was some comfort to him to remain in the home they had shared for their entire married life. Now he lived with his son and successive wives whose patience with the two drunkards was put to the test, all of them ultimately giving up and walking away from their marriage to Alex.

Alex was still married to his fourth wife, Cookie, when the first signs of dementia began to show up in the old fellow’s life. The alcoholism didn’t help to stave off or slow the steady decline of old Arthur Campbell. Sometimes dementia can be hidden if it is accompanied by the murky slide into repeated alcoholic stupors. The tolerance for the contents of the Scotch bottle diminishes with every episode of binge drinking, and it is not always easy to discern if the cause of confused behaviour is attributable to the liquor or deterioration in the mind. Be that as it may, the progression into confusion and irrational behaviour proceeded inexorably. It was probably Cookie, the only one in the household with a sound and sober grip on reality, who noticed the tell tale signs of what would today no doubt be diagnosed as Alzheimer’s Disease.

In the early stages of dementia, the decline is not necessarily noticeable to casual acquaintances. The ability of Arthur as a raconteur remained entertaining to his drinking buddies at the local pub. They would urge him to tell his yarns and encourage him by plying him with his favourite tipple. At the end of an evening of heavy drinking there was usually someone sober enough to escort the old fellow to his semi-detached home in Trill Road, Observatory. Although Alex and Cookie were the main occupants of the house by now, and Arthur was happy in his single room, the old chap retained the title deeds with a firm grip.

Dementia is a dreadful condition and its progress cannot be reversed by medical intervention. It is one of those illnesses that can be managed to a degree, but will eventually sever the sufferer’s contact with reality. It has been described quite accurately as akin to the packing and unpacking of a suitcase – the memories that established themselves in the mind first, are the last to be unpacked. Those memories packed in last are the ones that are lost first. Anyone who paid keen attention to the stories told by Arthur might have become aware of him repeating some incidents, randomly at first and with later progression, ad infinitum. He would tell the same stories ever more frequently, repeating incidents and events and increasingly losing members of his audience as the weeks and months wore on. Some who were well acquainted with his stories that delved ever further into his past and eventually emanating from his childhood experiences, would notice periodic changes in the manner of his sharing. They would pick up the odd detail which he started to leave out and as the months wore on it seemed as if the details became jumbled and eventually a mist of utter confusion would settle on the tales he spun. As is customary, there were flashes of lucidity at times. Sometimes he would manage to hold his buddies’ attention with sparks of clarity. However, these became less frequent as the world shrank around Arthur.

At home it became quite challenging to share the living space with him. At first the condition was fairly tolerable and Alex and Cookie could apply techniques of reminder, distraction, intervention and physical assistance. A stage was reached, though, when it was clear that professional care would soon be required. The toll it took on Cookie, as one of the primary care-givers, began to show. Alex sometimes relieved the strain on his wife by taking his father to the pub as he had when they were still drinking pals. She welcomed the respite even though the two delinquents invariably returned in an advanced state of intoxication and were difficult to handle. Alex would mostly go to bed and sleep it off, but the old fellow tended to become cantankerous and would put up a fight that invariably ended in an almighty row. Uncalled for aggression is a sure sign that the brain was beginning to fade. As he became ever more difficult to appease, Cookie’s health deteriorated and one day she suffered a major stroke and passed away. At the graveside Alex (finally not only a divorcee, but now a widower – a much more acceptable moniker in times that divorce was largely frowned upon), looked at the casket and uttered the following words: “Well Cookie, I’ve done my best!” Evidently he was referring to those occasions he relieved her from the onerous burden of care-giver when he took Arthur to the bar. Perhaps it was simply because he had imbibed copious amounts of whiskey  to summon some Dutch Courage for the funeral.

Shortly after Cookie had made good her exit from the marriage and the burden of caring for the old geezer, it became evident that Arthur would have to be transferred to a nursing home with 24-hour professional care. He could no longer be left alone whilst Alex was at the office. Not only was he a danger to himself, but soon he would be likely to leave a stove on and cause a fire. Semi-detached houses, by their very nature, would be like a tinder box and the whole block could be burnt to a cinder. The time had arrived for the child to step up and become the adult in the situation. Arthur would have to be placed in a care home for his own benefit, if not for the benefit of those around him. All qualms about this move had to be put aside for the greater good. The age-old guilt-tripping declarations that this was tantamount to “dumping” or “abandoning” a loved-one, had to be overcome. 

A suitable old age home providing adequate care was found. Arthur’s world was about to shrink another time. Now he would have to share accommodation with other dementia patients. This all came at a premium, but mercifully, the Scots frugality had ensured that sufficient funds were available. Alex did not abandon the old man – he made a point of paying regular visits and providing whatever the home required for Arthur’s care. He continued despite the regular complaints by the old chap that his family didn’t show any interest in him or visit – having forgotten from one day to the next about Alex’s dutiful visitation.

The Matron of the old age home ran a tight ship. She, Yvonne, and the Nursing Sister, Melinda, took close personal interest in the care of each one of the Alzheimer/dementia patients. The interest they took extended a little too far, it later transpired. The pair were smooth talking, duplicitous and conniving predators. They abused their proximity to the affairs of their patients to defraud relatives of the estates upon the demise of those patients whose families trusted them rather too readily. The Sister’s husband, Keith, fortuitously was a solicitor who acted in cahoots with the pair. They lost no time in redrafting wills of their patients unbeknownst to the unsuspecting relatives. They had no qualms about greasing the palms of equally corrupt professionals involved in their nefarious machinations – ensuring that all the t’s were crossed and i’s dotted, and covering this all in a veneer of respectability with assurances that upon the drafting of these documents the patients still happened to be of sound mind and fully cognizant of that to which they appended their suspiciously shaky signatures.

It was with horror that Alex discovered upon the eventual demise of his father that, not only was the entire estate embezzled in this way, but the house itself was on the market to be sold. He had to find alternative accommodation soon after dealing with the trauma of his father’s death and burial. The conveyancing  and formalities in legally whipping the home he had always rightly been assured would be transferred into his name, were dispensed with quite savagely. Alex would have been left destitute had he not been thrifty in his own right and been able to purchase an apartment nearby. 

Alex, the last of that branch of the Campbell family, blamed himself for not having been more astute and taken greater care to supervise his father’s affairs. He ascribed much of the carelessness he apportioned to himself to the taste he had acquired for the Campbell “curse” – Scotch in great quantities. Efforts to hold the scoundrels criminally and civilly liable for what can only be described as larceny, were of no avail.

Still reeling from the injustice perpetrated against him, Alex opened the Cape Times one morning about a year later, to read a prominent article about the mysterious shooting of the Matron. He had a tinge of sadness, not about the incident, but about the line in the article that assured the readers that she was wounded, but not fatally. What was abundantly clear, however, was that Alex was clearly not the only victim of this abundance of deceit. Someone else had evidently arranged this visitation of just desserts (albeit ham handedly, given the matron’s survival).

That evening Alex settled into his new armchair in his Observatory apartment, Glencairn Glass in hand, and topped to the brim with the finest Scotch he could find on the shelves of the bottle store near his new abode. To the shooter and to the ill-health of the wicked, he raised his glass and declared the fine old Scottish toast:  “Slèinte Mhath” before drowning his sorrows, the whiskey hardly touching sides.

©Paul M Haupt