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Let’s Not Be Kidding, Episode 1 Transcript

Host: Gavin Crawford

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

GAVIN CRAWFORD: My mother had a weird thing always growing up. She always she would always say the part that you're supposed to say loud, soft, and the part that you're supposed to say soft, loud for some reason, and I don't know why, but going to a restaurant with my mother was always completely humiliating because she would talk very quietly to any service person. The waiter would come and say, like, What can I get you? And my mom would always just be like. (as his mother) Well, can I, I guess that's just how I coke. Maybe like the the sandwich, I guess maybe the sandwich like, and that constantly the servers are like, I'm sorry. Pardon me? I just didn't quite catch the end of it. And you'd always have to be like, she's it's the sandwich. She'll have the sandwich. Not because she had dementia, just because she, for some reason ordering, made her voice go completely quiet. But then as soon as the waiter would walk away from the table, my mom would look at a woman across the restaurant who had, you know, some kind of like spiky purple hair or something like that, and then say very loud, like, how do you like to have hair like that? And you're like, what? It's backwards, mom. Like you, you can be loud for the sandwich and quiet for the "That woman's got too many kids". But I don't know. So that was. That's the voice of you. My name is Gavin Crawford. I am a comedian and actor and a writer. I came up through Second City. I had my own show on Comedy Network. I was on This Hour Has 22 minutes, a sketch show, for a number of years. Now I host a comedy quiz show on CBC Radio. You might remember me from all of those things. Some of those things are you might not remember me at all if you're my mother. And that's what this podcast is about.

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RACHEL MATLOW: So what is this going to be called?

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I don't know. I was calling it, Let's Not be Kidding, because that's something my mother always, whenever she's like, laying it on the line, she's like, you're not getting the part in that play. Let's not be kidding. That was her lay it on the line. So tentatively calling it that, but I don't know. Yeah, Most of the people I know are entertainers in some fashion, and so I didn't set out for it to be like, here's comedians talking about sad shit.

RACHEL MATLOW: But I mean, it's like comedians in Cars getting, like comedians in cars talking about Alzheimer's, baby. That's what you should call it.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Yeah, that's basically what it's turned out to be. I know. I'm constantly…

GAVIN CRAWFORD: This is Rachel Matlow, podcast producer and author of the memoir Dead Mom Walking a Lot. It is a lot.

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RACHEL MATLOW: Where's your mother at right now?

GAVIN CRAWFORD: She is in Lethbridge, in a home, in a care facility.

RACHEL MATLOW: And besides the location, like where she at in her?

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Oh, I don't know. Where she's at in her head is she's sort of forgotten how to walk. She doesn't talk that much, with a lot of staring off into the distance. Occasionally she'll sort of know who you are, you know, by just do a lot of like holding her hand. And so she gets annoyed and then wants to, like, push her wheelchair around in a circle for a while.

RACHEL MATLOW: Yeah. So it sounds. Yeah. She's further along than my dad.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I mean, I find myself just joke making jokes because...

GAVIN CRAWFORD: For the last eight or nine years, I've been navigating life with my mother's increasing dementia. And I decided to make this podcast because I realized that I just don't talk about my mom anymore. Which is a shame because I used to talk about my mom a lot because, A., she was kind of my best friend for a long time. And also she was just incredibly funny and fun to be around and just an endless supply of ridiculous comedy. But then I hit a point where people would be like, you know, how's your mom? And I would find myself saying, like, oh, you know, we're she's fine. We're fine. Next subject. Anyone seen any good movies lately? Do you want a coffee or how about a snack? Just to change the subject, because I couldn't talk about it because I didn't want people to feel sad. I don't want to make people depressed, but you know, I also want to talk about it because I don't want to forget, you know, how funny my mom was. I always used to find it funny the way that my mom would swear. Because she would swear, but she had a trick where she would drop the word out and she was very good at it. Like one time she was getting very flustered about trying to find the spice rack, was very disorganized and she was very flustered and all of a sudden she just threw the spice down. She was like (stutters) spices like she would do. She would just be that was like, oh, for - sake Gavin, why do I have to put up with this, bull - . As she would self-censor herself. You know, I remember once we were driving back from Cape Breton after my husband, Kyle's sister's wedding, and my mom had gone and done the flowers for it. And we were driving back across Canada and we had stopped at the IHOP somewhere, somewhere in Quebec there was an IHOP.

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KYLE TINGLEY: This was way early on, like back when I was still kind of like the interloper that wrecked his first relationship.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: That's Kyle, my mom, and he had a pretty tight relationship.

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KYLE TINGLEY: But we were at the IHOP and we're just looking at the venue and she's like, 'Oh, Kyle, you might enjoy the roll over fruit slam'.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: And everyone was like, What's mom? And then she's like, What? It's got strawberries and blueberries. I know Kyle likes that.

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KYLE TINGLEY: Everyone was laughing and I you can't tell with her if she was just, you know, making a suggestion genuinely, or if she was, you know, being a...Yeah, I tend to think it was intentional.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: But she would always play innocent. It was her favorite thing to do. I remember my sister walked in kind of bedraggled after a party one time and my mom, there's a lot of people sitting in the living room and my mother just said, Wow, you look like you've been rode hard and put away wet. And everyone was kind of like mom. And she's like, You know what? Like a horse, you know? But you could tell from the twinkle in his eye. She knew what she was saying.

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REGAN CRAWFORD: She really did have shitty luck when it came to health and they had like a lot of cats and stuff. Like she'd never like to be like, cooped up. She always loved to be able to go and do like what she wanted.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: This is my youngest sister, Regan, who personality wise is probably the most like my mom.

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REGAN CRAWFORD: So at least she has a disease where she doesn't really remember that feeling. Or if you're going to be locked in a home during a pandemic, probably you want to have a condition like that as opposed to maybe something else where, you know, and you want to go see your family or you you can remember people. So you're actually missing people like she's not missing anyone because she doesn't remember anyone. So that's kind of lucky for her. In a sense.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: What's happening now is surprising only in the fact that my mom has been through so much already. She always seems slightly unkillable. We used to joke, like at the end of everything, there would be like cockroaches and Cher and my mom. Because she had like polio when she was eight and then recovered from that. And then she had cancer for the first time. I think when I was in university in about 1993 and then beat that and then it came back again in like 2003 and she beat it again. And then it came back in 2008 and she had a stem cell transplant, I think when she was like, I don't know, maybe 64 or something, just on the cusp of when you were still eligible to have a stem cell transplant. But it worked. And since then, she's been cancer free. And I think that's one of the reasons why it took so long as a family to kind of really face up to what was actually happening. I mean, my mom would definitely forget things, but, you know, she had a full stem cell transplant and she would just chalk it up to something they called chemo brain. So we just kind of rolled with that idea for a long time. Probably way too long. In this podcast, I'm trying to find a way to talk about the harrowing and the hilarious things that we've been through over the last eight or nine years. But before I get to that, I should probably paint a bit of a picture of why my mom was like before she was like, what she's like now. My mom, Donna-Jean Anderson, was born in 1944 in Fort MacLeod, Alberta, which is a very tiny prairie town. If you want to have a picture of what it looks like, it's where they filmed Brokeback Mountain in Fort MacLeod. So a few picture, one main road, a few little houses and erase the hot gay cowboys. That's Fort MacLeod. My mom was always really cosmopolitan. For someone who grew up in the tiniest of southern Alberta towns. She had a real cosmopolitan air about her, and she always liked to be just ahead of the curve. She could make anything. She could sew anything. So she sewed a lot of her own clothes. She sewed her own grab dress. She made a lot of our clothes when we were growing up. I don't know how she developed such a cosmopolitan air coming from where she came from. I guess it was magazines because my mother, she loves the magazine. She still loves the magazine. Except now she likes to rip the pages out (laughs, then sighs)

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KERRY SACCONE: She was awesome. She was cool and hilarious and irreverent and incredibly caring without being a smother.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: This is Kerry Saccone, who's known both me and my mom since grade six.

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KERRY SACCONE: I mean, your house was where all the kids went, and if any kid was having trouble, they were always living at your house. Every time I went over there, there was some new kid living in the basement.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: We always had strays.

KERRY SACCONE: But she was not necessarily like other mothers. She always had fun stuff to show. She always had interesting things to say. She always had a story. She was great to hang out with if you had stories to tell because she would become more and more animated. But if you didn't feel like talking, you could just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: That's true. Yeah. My mother wasn't big on silence. But. She did really champion the underdog. We did have strays at our house all the time. So much so that once I came home and there was a guy sleeping on the couch and I thought it was my sister's friend. My sister thought it was my friend, but it turned out it was just a man who wandered it at our house and took a nap on the couch and nobody even batted an eye. Eventually, like a day later, we were like, What was your friend doing here? And everyone was like, that's my friend. But that was my mom. She was just kind, kind almost to a fault, at least if you were one of her children. I found an old journal of my mother's where she talks about my eighth birthday and is somehow blissfully unaware that I wasn't enjoying the party because she had actually invited all of my school bullies. This is her journal entry from my eighth birthday, April 2nd, 1979. Today is Gavin's eighth birthday, am cooking a special roast beef dinner. We use the new china. Gavin was very pleased. He said Dinner by candlelight? My birthday must be pretty special, eh? Tomorrow we will have a birthday party for his class. This is the entry from the day of the party. Today was the day of the big party. 12 little boys make you happy that you've had a few girls. Due to the fact that I put money in the cake, there wasn't a crumb left. Gavin, for his part, liked the party enough, but he sure doesn't seem to like noise and hassle for very long. He was very happy to call it quits and go to his judo lesson. Yes, that's right. I took judo. Not of my own choice. That was during the phase where my parents were very. I'll make a man out of you. My dad put me in T-ball and baseball and hockey and judo, hoping any manly thing would stick. It did not. My mom and I are really alike in a lot of ways. One of the ways we are alike is that neither of us exactly fit in rural southern Alberta. Here's a clip of me long after I left appearing on CBC's The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos.

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GEORGE STROUMBOULOPOULOS: (indistinct) All right. So when you were when you were going there did you fit in in your own town? Did you have a moment when you looked around, like I got to get out of here. The things that I want to do. This isn't working for me here.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Oh, no. There's tons of little gay kids in southern Alberta. Like, you know, I'm the only kid probably that, like, asked for the soundtrack to Evita for, like, my 12th birthday, you know? And then, like, when the girl that I had liked at the time didn't go out with me, you know, I would drive around, like at 16 driving. I'd be like, Don't cry for me. Sara Miller The truth is, I never liked you. And oddly, that did turn out to be true. I like their brother, Paul. So what can you do?

GEORGE STROUMBOULOPOULOS: It happens that way.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Because of the pandemic, I wasn't able to travel back to Alberta for almost eighteen months, so I wasn't able to see my mom at all in the care home until July of 2021 when I finally made it back.

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GAVIN CRAWFORD: Well we're finished this. Right? This will probably taste good.

GAVIN'S MOTHER: Her husband, how, this time.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Last bite here. (indistinct) want to try this juice?

GAVIN CRAWFORD: When I finally get to Alberta. A lot has changed even in just a year and a half. She's well, she's she's pretty quiet now and she doesn't remember how to walk anymore. And the stupidest thing is that she's wearing a pastel pink hoodie. And for some reason, this is what upsets me the most, because who is this lady?

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NURSE: She's all done yea?

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I think that's about it.

NURSE: She did pretty good.

REGAN CRAWFORD: Like I've never seen her wear a hoodie. In my entire life.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Someone get that lady a cheetah print and a leather cap.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: My youngest sister, Regan, again.

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REGAN CRAWFORD: She doesn't want that. You need to get her a cashmere sweater cause she doesn't wear hoodies. If she's cold, she gets a sweater. Probably Cashmere turtleneck. Yes. Scoop neck? No.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Do you have to think really hard to like? Remember before, Mom?

REGAN CRAWFORD: I mean, you know, little. But I still do remember. But. It's very vivid what she's like now, but it's just not her.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Do you think of them as different people?

REGAN CRAWFORD: I think of her as like, she's, like, trapped in there and she's super pissed. No, I really do. I don't see on her face like she's like, she's not there. She's a vacant stare. But I also would be like, if she, like, she would be so pissed that the only way she could cope is just to, like, completely. Like she's like a zombie.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: This sounds terrible, but in my brain, mum's kind of unkillable. Because she's already had, like, cancers, a stem cell. Like, I feel like she could live to be, like, 110.

REGAN CRAWFORD: I mean, I. Yeah, kind of. But, like, this is, like, just. She's already killed.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: So that's where we are now in the present where I'm meeting this woman and I'm thinking, this woman is not my mother, but also I know that she is my mother. And sometimes I can tell it's her from, I don't know, an eyeroll or a look in her eye. It's just a certain look that says. Let's not be kidding. My mother was a very waspy woman. She was very socially appropriate. And she didn't really like to talk smack about people, but she did like to let you know that she saw it all. And the way she would do that is she would sort of weaponized. Let's not be kidding. For instance, if I was in a play and wasn't a particularly good play, my mom would say, you know, well, I thought you were great, but let's not be kidding. And then not elaborate any further than that. Or she would say about one of my father's friends, like, you know, Oh, John's a fine fellow. He's friendly enough, but let's not be kidding. It was just to let you know that she knew the lay of the land. The only other consistent thing about my mom was that she was also always freezing. Once we were driving through Death Valley and she was like, Can we just warm it up a little bit? We used to call her frost fingers. We always used to joke that, like, if my mother went to hell, she'd be the one person wandering around being like, Is there management in here? Can we get the thermostat turned up just a titch? Like, Mom, we're literally on a lake of fire right now. Well, you think that they could heat it?

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GAVIN CRAWFORD: We're going to have turkey and sweet potatoes and turnip puff, you like turnip puff?

GAVIN'S MOTHER: Sounds really good. Yeah.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: When I finally got back to visit my mom after the lockdowns ended, we brought her out of the home and back to my dad's place. Or what was our childhood home, and sat her down in front of a roaring fire. And of course, she was still freezing.

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GAVIN CRAWFORD: Want your hands in this blanket? Are they cold?

GAVIN'S MOTHER: This can go right up over your chin.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Yeah. Is that what you want? Right up to Nice, cozy, warm. Alright. There you go. How's that?

GAVIN'S MOTHER: I don't know if that's any you want there or not.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: No. You're like a burrito making into a mom-rito.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I guess part of what was so startling in returning to Alberta after all that time was to see this new person who's just kind of sitting there staring off into space or kind of pushing her wheelchair around the hallways in an effort to keep busy. And knowing how frustrating that must be for my mom because she never sat still. My mom was always busy. My mom had wanted to go to art school, but according to her, my grandparents wouldn't fund that. So she ended up becoming a teacher, started the deaf school also at the school for, I'm going to say, troubled kids. While she was putting my dad through dental school, there's five kids in my family. My mom had five kids, eight pregnancies. That's the way she always used to say it. Just breezing it through. She's like, Well, I had five kids, eight pregnancies. She was always working on some project, whether it was doing flowers for someone's wedding, funeral designs, the lights for my sister's dance recital. She ended up at one point starting an interior design business with one of her friends. She was always doing something. So we called her a stay at home mom. But we were. We were all kind of latchkey kids. So that's before Mom. And I can't really pinpoint the exact moment when she started to change. What was the moment and should I have noticed it? Did I notice it and did I just pretend not to notice it like everybody else? I would talk to my mom on the phone at least once a week, probably twice a week, pretty much throughout my whole life. She would phone up just out of the blue or I would phone her and just be like, Hi, Gav. Just it's just me. Though she always introduced herself. I'm like, Yes, mom, I've known you my entire life. You don't have to tell me. It's just you. But there was a point where sometimes my phone would ring and I would answer and I would say like, hello. And my mom would be like, oh, oh, Gavin, hi. It's just me. And I knew that she was trying to call someone else, but she would recover from it incredibly quickly and be like, you know, I just thought I'd call. And I'm like, Where are you? Are you sure? And sometimes at the end of the phone call, I'd be like, oh, yeah, did you have another phone call that you needed to make, Mom? She was like, oh, I don't know. Maybe I should probably call your dad. Uh, just see when he's coming home from hunting or whatever. Suffice to say, we should have known it was coming, but it took us all a while to see it.

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KYLE TINGLEY: You know, there came a point where I was, watching her like. And I don't think anyone. I think they were kind of in denial about it.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: This, again, is Kyle.

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KYLE TINGLEY: I would say to Gavin, like, you got to this, something is, you know, she can't remember where she's supposed to be going or I feel like I can't leave her alone anymore. And I felt like I was the only one saying there's something happening here when it was starting because I was with her and I saw her not be able to navigate shopping.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: It's funny that that's the thing. That really drove it home was the shopping. Anyone that spent any time with my mother knows she loves to shop. She shopped like a detective. She didn't really ever buy anything. She just needed to find the clues. She was like the Columbo of shopping. She would always turn back at the last second. It was like, just one more thing.

KYLE TINGLEY: She was so frustrating to shop because she would never buy anything. She would just. I just be like, please buy something to make it worthwhile that I'm coming with you. I'm just she's just looking. And she was never sure. She's like, well, I'll come back. I'm like, well, you're not going to come back. And I think she just liked the process of shopping. Like it was just her fun. It wasn't like she'd ever needed anything.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I mean, to just give you an example. Once I was at a mall where there was a gas leak and my mother stayed in the store while they were carrying people out on stretchers. And I was yelling at her in the change room that we had to go because there was a gas leak. And she just kept yelling back from the change room, oh, for God's sakes, Gavin, you'll say anything to get me out of this change room! Give me a minute. Here's when I knew we were at the Eaton center, maybe 2016. My parents had flown from Lethbridge, where they live to shop and spend a few weeks with myself and my husband, Kyle. Now, as I said, normally we don't shop together. Normally, my mother finds me annoying and we separate and she doesn't like to be rushed. So it's just let's meet by such and such fountain and such and such o'clock. And we basically have an understanding that my mom will eventually come sauntering up to that fountain, probably 45 minutes to an hour after she's agreed to meet us, and she'll have one small bank. Anyways, that's normal. That was normal. But that day in 2016 was the day that I realized there wasn't a normal anymore. So we're at the Eaton Center. It's probably around Christmas time. The decorations are up. We make the usual plan. We'll meet by the giant Christmas tree at 3:30, and Kyle goes off to buy Christmas presents, and I go off in the other direction to buy whatever it is that I want to buy. And as I leave, I kind of notice my mom is just sort of lingering by the tree, ostensibly, I guess, deciding which direction she wants to begin the treasure hunt in. So we come back a couple of hours later and I find my mother already waiting for us by the big tree. And I say to Kyle, oh, my mom's early. And Kyle looks at me and says, Gavin, I don't think she ever left.

KYLE TINGLEY: When I came back, she was at the same table, like I think she'd probably been circling it for like, the whole time I was gone. It was just impossible to me that she went elsewhere and came back. She just was kind of like, this table is where I'm staying.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Now I don't believe this, so I just shrug and say no. I mean, you know, there's no way my mom just stood there for 2 hours in the middle of the Eaton Center with all these stores around. She's probably just finally on time for once. And Kyle says, she has no bags. So I said to Kyle, that's not unusual. She never buys anything until the third trip anyways. But even as I'm saying that. I know that he's right. So now we know. We know what it is. We know how it started. And we know basically where the ride goes. But I guess what I'm looking for here are the peaks. In the roller coaster that only goes down. I mean, they say comedy is tragedy plus time, but. You know, what do you do when the tragedy unfolds so unbearably slowly that the comedy has no choice but catch up? It's been kind of strange processing this, trying to figure out how do I talk about my mom, especially with the kind of brain that wants to turn everything into a joke. I mean, anyone that's been on this journey or has dealt with this kind of long grief knows there are jokes to be had and you kind of need to have them. But it also feels wrong. Over the next six episodes, I'll sort of track the progression of my mom's Alzheimer's. And I also talk with friends of mine who have experienced or are experiencing similar things with their loved ones. One of those people is singer songwriter Jann Arden, who's been very open about her mother's journey through Alzheimer's. Here's how she put it.

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JANN ARDEN: I came to understand that my mom was in two places and she's straddling two places, but she's in this physical body. She said to me one day, Your body's your spaceship and your soul is your pilot. I was like, What? And it's it's still sticks with me. Well, you can't take your body with you where your soul goes because you can't breathe up there. I'm like, no, you can't. And but I just. So your mother's on a journey, and wherever she is in that realm that we can't access, she's fine, too. And it's her journey to make.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Jann and I have occasionally been texting back and forth over the last four or five years just offering each other support. And she sent me this one funny text, just checking in, you know, How are you doing? How's your mom? And I just texted back. I should try and find it because it was funny. Hang on. One sec. I need to find that thread because you said something very funny. This is from 2020. Just saying, I've been thinking about you through all of this, and I can't fathom the lockdown. That's the worst part of all of this. And I just wrote back I'm listening to a lot of records and having, you know, sudden crying jags in between and trying to write jokes. So that's fun. Thanks for checking in. It's just nice to know someone else knows the deep fuckery of this. To which Jann just wrote. It's beyond shit. And then wrote the Beyond shit burger. Which is exactly what it is. So I guess what I'm trying to do here is look for the corn in the Beyond shit burger. To see if there's something good that we can pick out of all of this. So this is probably going to be a sad story, but it also has its funny parts. But as my mom would say, let's not be getting. Coming up next time on Let's Not Be Kidding.

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UNNAMED SPEAKER: How long has it been for your mother?

GAVIN CRAWFORD: She's still alive and she's.

UNNAMED SPEAKER: But she's.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: How long has it been since she started to descend?

UNNAMED SPEAKER: You said eight years?

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I think it's about eight years. It's been about eight years when it was like, more than just the occasional sign. Then there's the years where she replaced her moisturizer with bronzer and just would come out of the bathroomas like an Oompa Loompa, like a circle, an orange circle of Oompa Loompa, because she thought she was moisturizing. And you'd she'd be like, ready to go to the store. And you're like, No, you are not.

UNNAMED SPEAKER: So I see a really good gay son would have put the moisturizer on his face, said, see Mom, now we look the same that you go together.

UNNAMED SPEAKER: How dare you, gay son, Shame me. Gay sons and their demented moms. Certified Mother's Boy. That's next. Time on. Let's Not Be Kidding, girls. You've been listening to. Let's Not Be Kidding from CBC podcast. The show is written and hosted by me, Gavin Crawford. David Carol is my producer, story editor and sound designer. Emilie Quesnel is our digital coordinating producer. Original Music by William Lamoreaux. Our senior producer is Daemon Fairless. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oke. Tanya Springer is the senior manager of CBC podcast and Arif Noorani is the director.

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Transcript of Let's Not Be Kidding, Episode 1

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