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Let’s Not Be Kidding, Episode 3 Transcript

Host: Gavin Crawford

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

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KYLE TINGLEY: Well, she forgot that there's a dishwasher, that dishwashers exist, I think. Or she didn't know where it was. Didn't want to ask. So she just hand-wash everything badly, like she'd lost the capacity to.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: But then put things back in the most outlandish of places.

KYLE TINGLEY: Well you do that! One time I pulled open the drawer and the bacon was in it.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Yeah, the bacon and the bacon drawer. I know it was the knife drawer. That's just me getting distracted because there was also a knife in the crisper. I just put the wrong thing in the wrong spot. While I was in a rush. That's not a dimensia thing.

KYLE TINGLEY: It better not be.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: That's my husband, Kyle Tingley and me. Somehow, we've been together for 25 years.

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GAVIN CRAWFORD: Didn't my mom used to, like, load the dishwasher with clean dishes?

KYLE TINGLEY: Well, you never knew what was happening. It was just a complete, random, busy work in the kitchen. She'd rewatch things she washed or she'd just put them away. It was just chaos. Complete chaos. And then after she'd leave, I'd spend, like, two weeks. Like, I'd find things here and there. I'd be like, where did the strainer go? It would be in like, I don't want, say, in the fridge, but just not where it's supposed to be. Like, just everything is just not where it's supposed to be.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I'm Gavin Crawford, and this is Let's Not be Kidding. A story about me and my mom and Alzheimer's. Episode Three: Just roll with it. So this episode is about a new phase with my mom. The phase, I like to call it the looping years. And for us, that kind of lasted around 4 to 5 years. It's the time when your loved one is basically them, but also sometimes not them. Or they're pretty much them. But they ask the same question over and over and over and over and over. And you really get to understand about your own level of patience. You might think you were the most patient saint on earth. And you may find out that you are decidedly not.

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JANN ARDEN: It was so unpredictable. And I guess in early days in the back of my mind, I thought, oh, she seems better this week. Maybe that was just maybe she just had a bladder infection. You know, you always hear, Oh, yeah, bladder infection. They can really lose. They're not... Hallucinate. I think for two years, I hope it was a really long bladder infection.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: That's Canadian superstar Jann Arden.

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ANN ARDEN: I am a human being living in southern Alberta. Sometimes I sing, sometimes I write things. I'm a phenomenal actor. I've been acting for over three weeks now, so I'm really getting good at it.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Jann's being modest there. She's a platinum, award winning singer, songwriter, actor, author, and she's in the third season of her own self-titled show. Jan's been very public about her mom's journey through Alzheimer's, and we talked a little bit about this particularly weird period.

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JANN ARDEN: She would have a lucid day and then the next day was a lot of anger. And telling me I was the worst daughter in the world and how dare I have these strangers come to her house and do laundry? And then the next day she was passive and singing, and she'd actually be on the phone and said, Do you call me? Well, yes. What do you think? What are you holding in your hand, Jann? A phone? I thought you want might want to go down the road and then I get all ready and go over there. And she had no recollection. I said I thought you wanted to go down the road. Why, you could give me a heads up. So you kind of wanted to laugh and then you just felt like crawling into bed and crying and never coming out again. Because at some point you realize not all is lost. That sounds really dramatic, but a version that you relied on most of your adult life is no longer. You can't unlock that door. So I tell this to people all the time. You can look up all the information about Alzheimer's, dementia that you want. Every individual journey is going to be exactly that. It is a standalone individual journey.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Once it really sunk in that there was definitely something going on. Cognitively speaking with my mom. We really put a push on trying to spend as much time together as possible. We would take them to our cabin in Cape Breton or go on little trips, and it all kind of culminated in this month long trip to Toronto, where my parents came to stay with us for basically the entire month of December. And that's when we really noticed things were starting to go a bit haywire. Like once I gave my mom a treat to give to the cat and I sort of looked away for 2 seconds and I looked back and she had popped the treat into her mouth. And I didn't know what to say, so I just didn't say anything. That was the period where Kyle was getting increasingly frustrated by my mom constantly trying to do the dishes. I mean, my mom spent her whole life picking up after five kids and a husband who didn't like to pick up after himself. So she naturally just follows along behind everyone cleaning. And we had just gotten a new cat and the house was covered in little plastic springs/ and mice and cat toys for the cat to play with. And my mom was constantly running around and picking them up and then hanging them on the Christmas tree, which is fine. But if you have a cat, you know, the one thing you don't want on a Christmas tree is a cat toy. But the thing that was the most frustrating with that trip is that my mother would ask you the same question every 5 minutes. My mother doesn't like silence and she couldn't watch TV anymore because if a character went off screen and then came back on screen, she had no idea who it was. So she would be like, is that the wife? Is that the brother? Well, where did she come from? So you just turn off the TV and then you have conversations. And anytime there's a lull in the conversation, my mom would bring up a question, and depending on who she was talking to, the question was different.

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KYLE TINGLEY: She couldn't just we're driving somewhere to the mall or whatever. She couldn't just sit there and be quiet. She had to think of something to say. And what she always thought to say was, And where is your sister living these days? Or where is your, how's your brother? Is he married? Like she just asked me questions about my siblings, basically. And if it was a half an hour car ride, I get the same question many times in the ride, so.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: With me she would always say, Gavin, did you ever know the Birch Girls? The Birch girls went to the Catholic school that were daughters of a friend of my mom's who I had never met. And I would tell her like, no, mom. They went to Catholic school and we I went to LCI. So I never actually met them. And then you would be like, Oh, okay, yeah. Well, and then she'd tell me a little bit about them, you know, like, oh, one is a nun. I don't know if you know that. And the other one became a nurse, and I don't know what the other one's doing. And the conversation would die down for a second. And literally 5 seconds later she would be like, say, Gavin, did you ever meet the Birch Girls at school? And I started to get so frustrated that I just started to make things up. At first I would be like, oh, yeah, I know the Birch Girls. The one one of them was a nun and the other one was a nurse or something. I don't know what happened to the other one. And then she'd be like, oh yeah, yeah, that's right. And then, you know, literally 5 minutes later, she'd be like, oh, Gavin, I meant to ask you, did you ever come across the Birch Girls when you were at school? And by this point, I'm getting so frustrated and just as a joke or for my own amusement, I'd be like, oh, aren't those the girls that flew to space in a Honda Civic? And my mom would give me a kind of an eye roll the let's not be kidding look and be like, oh, come on, Gavin. No, you must know them. One was a nun and the other one one became a nurse. And I don't know what happened to the other. It got so bad that at a certain point my sister called and she's like, How's the trip going? And I was like, I am ready to print myself a T-shirt that says, Yes, I know the Birch Girls. And it was at that moment when I realized why my dad had brought my mom to come and stay with me for a month, because he was just as frustrated and just as exhausted with the repeating of the questions. Only he wasn't able to have fun with it.

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GAVIN'S FATHER: It was horrendous when she was home and I was here with her just me. It was awful. You can't argue with them. You can say, Oh, no, that's wrong. And oh, no, that's not right. You just can't do that. You know that all they do is get upset, you know?

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Yeah, but you did use to do that. Well, we were at the cabin. It took me a while to get to that because I used to get mad at me when I would roll with that. And you would be like Donna.

GAVIN'S FATHER: Yeah, well, I mean, sometimes you just do it to tease her though.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I wasn't teasing her. That's not true.

GAVIN'S FATHER: I can never tell with you whether you're being serious or whether you're just playing along for laughs.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: My sister Reagan also struggled with the constant questioning period and also the fine line between when to tell the truth and when to spin it a little bit just to keep mom calm.

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REAGAN: I would mostly just roll with where she is. Yeah, especially if she was like, well, where's my mom? My parents are waiting for me, or like, I got to get home. My parents like, I'm not going to be like, Actually, you're old now and your parents died. I your kids are all grown up like this. Wow. Guess what? Your life is almost over. Like. No, horrible.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I know but Dad would do that sometimes. He would be like, Donna, your mom is dead.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Everybody reacts differently. My husband, Kyle is incredibly patient. He will answer the same question thousands of times without going off script. My father will correct. He doesn't like to go with the flow. He doesn't like to lie. I am a performer and I think it really helped me in this instance to be a bit of a performer because I found a way to cope with the looping. That was fun for me, but also a little bit fun for my mother.

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NORA MCCLELLAN: To me, at least, this is where improv came in wildly handy.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: My friend Nora McClellan is an actor at the Shaw Festival. She's known for Orphan Black and currently she's a very mean nun on Son of a Bitch. She went through her own journey with her mom's dementia, and we talked a little bit about some of the performer tricks that she found herself using.

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NORA MCCLELLAN: I found myself using this as an astonishing exercise in how to keep myself in a new moment, answering the same question. I don't want to exaggerate, but say 20 times in 2 minutes. And my mother was, as I hope I've mentioned, very much a why not? I would say, would you like to go to the art gallery? Why not? She'd say. And then she'd go, are we going out? And I go, Well, I was thinking we'd go to the art gallery. She goes, Oh, well, why not? Well, where are we going? Oh, do you know what I was thinking? I was thinking we could go to the art gallery, and then I would just keep going because I realized for her, it's the first time. And how do you keep that frustration? And it's something to learn very quickly. Of course, you can't pass that on to the person who is going, why are you angry or frustrated with me? Because I'm asking a question. And that's heartbreaking. But also for me, I chose once it got to that point, to go, okay, let's see how to keep this up.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: One of the basic tenants of improv is the concept of Yes! And. You never say no. You say yes and add something else. And the other person then does that back. And that's how you build a scene. And it comes in very handy in these types of situations. For instance, do you know the Birch, girls? Yes. And they're the nicest girls I've ever met.

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AURORA BROWNE: I've never been so happy to be funny as I have been in the last year and a half, because like the person who I grew up trying, you know, all of your all these other people are laughing because I wanted so hard to make my dad laugh. And so when I do, still that happens. It's like, okay, if a person's sense of humor is there, there's a certain structure in their head that is probably around. And if they're making that like old expression kind of thing, it's like, great, you know, I know I can still reach them a little bit. But sometimes you don't know what is going to set off.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: That's my friend, actor and comedian Aurora Browne. She's going through a similar thing with her father. Do you have some go to jokes or just attitudes that you use with your father now where you're like this usually get them or if I'm just this type of sarcastic.

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AURORA BROWNE: Yeah. Lately he's been laughing louder and more freely. But, you know, it's usually that kind of, like, cheeky. You know, he's still at home and he had a personal care worker who came in like, you know, gave him a little, like, nice foot bath kind of thing because, you know, pedicures, manicures go out the window when they you don't realize for the longest time. And so I think. So you're sitting in a chair in the dining room with your feet in warm water. That sounds like a recipe to piss yourself. And he just couldn't stop laughing. Or just the little thing. Sometimes he does get that little that little, like, eyebrow raise. Kind of like, what are you saying kind of thing? And. But, you know, it's funny. Like, it's it's like there's leftover programs. Like, you know, his mind is like a loose collection. It's like, you know, for most of his life, he's been a solid bar of the color of Bob Brown. And now it's like a pointillist painting. It's like it's starting all those little bits, like they're still there, but they're further away from each other. So there's gaps between them. But it's like an execute program kind of sets in and he knows how to like laugh and joke for the second because he remembers doing this. It's like, you know, like Aurora said a funny thing and that means I laugh, but I know what this is. And, you know, like, we can be here for a second.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: As I said before, we tried to spend as much time with my parents as possible, but it was still very unusual for them to come and visit for an entire month. And it was even more unusual that during that trip my dad rolled off the plane with about eight pre-rolled joints and a bottle of cannabis oil. How do you roll a joint? He says, when he rolls off the plane. I got a bunch of different kinds and rolling papers, plus some oil. I heard it helps. Now, my dad has never touched a drug in his life. This was just after they made marijuana legal. And I could tell my dad was really looking for something, anything that would just stop my mom from asking the same question over and over and over. December of that year was one of the coldest Decembers that we've ever had in Toronto. For the entire month it was almost -30 every day, so we couldn't really go do anything. We were mostly just stuck in the house, stuck in the house with my mom bringing up the Birch girls every 5 minutes. So out of desperation we turned to the weed. And the whole month was sort of a weird comedy of errors where we would spark up a joint and then hand it to my mom and then she would somehow perfectly haul off this marijuana cigaret claiming she'd never smoked one in her life. But then do a perfect inhale, hold and exhale. The result was always the same. Nothing. Never silence. She was either asleep or she was making conversation. So we tried smoking the weed that didn't work. So then we moved on to the oils. I mean, we didn't know I, I don't do cannabis oil, so I had no idea. And neither did Kyle. But my dad was like, let's try the oil. So we did. We were heading out to a restaurant, but about an hour before we thought, well, we'll give Mom a few drops just under her tongue to see how it goes. And again, really, nothing. Just seemed like normal, Mom. Not tired, not particularly agitated or particularly calm. It just seemed like it did nothing until we got to the restaurant. At which point my mom ordered a Coke and she kept saying, guys, what is in this? Is there rum in this? Did you put a lot of rum in this? Because I just feel like my head is going to fly off my body. And we kept saying like, no, we gave you some cannabis oil back at the house. But she's like, what? Cannabis oil? And she would forget 2 seconds later. There's no short term memory at that point. So now we've drugged her. We don't know if we've overdosed her. And Kyle and I are looking at ourselves across the table thinking, are we going to get arrested here? I'm pretty sure we're going to have to call 911. And I'm going to have to explain that I've given my mother a bunch of cannabis oil, not against her will, but kind of without her knowing. And how will I explain that? And I know it sounds weird and maybe even a bit cruel that you're drugging your mother, but it's just so frustrating.

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JANN ARDEN: I was so mad at my mom sometimes and it was just fear. And once I kind of opened that window up in my heart, I didn't feel quite as guilty. I didn't live in this place of guilt because I was so scared.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: This again is Jann Arden.

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JANN ARDEN: You're just scared. You're not mad. You're not. You know, guilt was not a great place to live, because, like you, what can I do? A man I thought finally took me five years. So halfway through the journey. She couldn't come where I was going. I had to go where she was going. And stand there where she was. And I actually remember the day she was seeing people all the time. And when I look back now, she's been gone a couple of years, actually three years this month. Gosh, for that time, go. But anyway, she didn't know how to use the phone during the day, but she sure knew how to use it at 3:30 in the morning. We would all come back to her because mom and dad's house was 100 yards from mine. They they were out here on my property. But she'd say those people are by the bird feeder again. And I don't know whether to call the police or oh my God. I march over there and look and, you know, it was windy and I'm hanging on to my boobs, going across the driveway and in giant rubber boots. And she'd be pointing from her second story bedroom window down at this table. But anyway, and I would go up. There's nobody there. You know, I did that all the time. And then one day we were outside and I was just about to lose my nut and start yelling at her. She's going, well, there's ten people with orange hats on. You're on your deck. And I felt the ire come from my liver. It was just about to, like, move my molars out of the way. It come blasting out of my face and. I said, well, you'd think they could pick up a broom and clean up over there, you know? Well, yeah, and that was it. It was over. Because before it was just the fight. Well, I don't care if you can't see them. I see them. And are you calling me crazy? And you make me feel bad and there's nothing there. And this would go on for 20 minutes. And I sat there on the concrete step of my mom's house and I thought I just figured something out. And I had tears rolling down my face and I kind of turned away from her and I'm wiping them off as quickly as they're forcing themselves out of my eyeballs. And I thought, this is how we go forward. I have to go where she is. And it was a very big day for me. In the scheme of things that may seem so benign. But I got my mom back and I got to be a daughter. And I stopped feeling like I was going to have a heart attack all the time of out of anger and fear. I just went where she was. I just agreed. I agreed to everything.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: The funny thing is, I think the way that I learned how to deal with my mother looping or having memory lapses and not be too frustrated about it, I actually learned from my mother before this happened because her mother, my grandma Jean, also had Alzheimer's when I was about 18 to 25. And my mom would go and visit her every day and try and make us go and visit as often as we could. But she would always say, just roll with her. Whatever she says, whatever she thinks. Just roll with it. And I was I thought I was prepared for that until I got there. And I walked into the room and my grandmother was just sitting in a chair in the middle of the room. And then she was like, oh, thank God you're finally here. And then she said, like, just take a little I don't want you to take too much off just a little bit. And I realized that she had decided I was a hairdresser and that she was at the hairdresser. She was a little mad at me for being late. At first, I honestly, to be honest, I was a little bit offended because I thought I was kind of homophobic. Then I was like, of course, oh, I'm the gay hairdresser. And I didn't know what to do. So I gave her a trim. I remember getting home and telling my mother and my mother being like, What? You did what? And I was like, well, you said, roll with it. And then my mom just kind of rolled her eyes and muttered, Good grief, and gave me that little wry smile.

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KYLE TINGLEY: She'd always just say, What direction is this? Like north, south. Which is it's completely irrelevant question. Wherever we are, it doesn't matter. It's just it was just a way she would say she doesn't know where she is.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: This is my husband, Kyle.

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KYLE TINGLEY: To just say, is this are we going north right now? And then as it progressed, the are we going north right now is like where? Like, what city is this? Like? It just kind of changed from, what area of Toronto is this when we're not in Toronto at all or whatever, so.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I think honestly, one part of my life and it's terrible, but most of me is terrible. But one of my favorite things of during that time was watching you try to head my mom off from cleaning up the kitchen.

KYLE TINGLEY: I tried everything. It just was you could not.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Like you did try things, though, like, what would you try? I can't even remember.

KYLE TINGLEY: I would just be like, look, you're on vacation. You don't need to worry about this. Just go and sit down, go watch TV, or I would just give her options of anything else to do besides help. Like I just didn't need. She's like, oh, I'll just get this done. I'm like, I just gave up at some point. Like, you just can't. You would have to physically restrain her to keep her from putting shit where it wasn't supposed to go.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Alexis told me when, my mom was up there staying with her. My mom, for some reason, took all of Alexis's forks and put them in a box in the basement to donate to the Salvation Army.

KYLE TINGLEY: Well, she was probably right.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Alexis is the sister just younger than me. And to be fair, she has always had lovely forks. It was a long month that December. It was cold and it was harrowing and it was hilarious. But probably my favorite thing that happened, that Christmas, I guess it happened sort of because of Kyle. It's weird how my mom developed a real affinity for Kyle as the years went on. It took about 24 years for her to move from like, who is this gay guy that's pulling Gavin too far down the rainbow road to, like, the man who could do no wrong, who had such an impeccable design sense. And he really did. I mean, when Kyle does a Christmas tree, it looks like the Christmas tree at the Hudson Bay. And I think my mom really appreciated that because all of our whole lives, my mom was very specific about our Christmas tree. It had to be a certain height and it had to be flocked. I don't know if you know what flocking is, but it was very big in the seventies. Everybody loved a flock, a tree. It was fake snow that you would use the vacuum cleaner on blow to mix up this kind of wet white powder. Dad would take the tree out to the garage and flock it. So it's very funny when we were kids would be like, Where's Dad? He's out flocking the tree. My mom would say. And then it would harden into a beautiful kind of snowy powder on all the needles. So we had a flocked tree with yellow lights, very specific ornaments that were braided wheat from IKEA. Any ornaments from our childhood went on a separate tree that was put in my bedroom where I was allowed to have colored lights and all the crafty ornaments that we wanted. But my mother did not want our shitty kid ornaments anywhere near the beautiful living room Christmas tree anyway. Somehow that December, my mom suddenly decided that Kyle must have invented the Christmas tree. We would be sitting there in the evening, she'd be sipping a Coke, which she liked to do. I'd have a record on trying to avoid being asked a question, and she'd kind of glance over at the tree and let you think for a bit. And then she'd say, whose idea was that? And I was like, What? Like, who thought of that? To bring a tree inside and put lights on it. Was that Kyle? I bet it was Kyle. And for a minute I didn't know what she was talking about. And we're like, yeah, well, Kyle decorates it, you know? I mean, you always had nice trees, and she would be like, yeah, I mean, imagine bringing a tree inside. Only Kyle would think of that. He has really got an eye. And I realized that it was like she was seeing a Christmas tree for the very first time and thought, what a gold mine of an idea Kyle had hit upon. She said one time. We should call your sisters and tell them to do this, because this looks really good. Like, you know, I bet everyone would do this if they saw it. Leave it to Kyle.

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KYLE TINGLEY: You know, how do I take that? Would it be flattering that she thinks I designed a centuries old tradition dating before Christianity? I don't know. Like, it's just one of those things that happens with that disease.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I mean, at a certain point, what are you going to do? You just roll with it. So I guess next Christmas, if you're going to put a tree in your house and decorate it all up to celebrate the season, thank my husband, Kyle. It was his idea. Thanks for listening. Next time on Let's not be kidding.

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KYLE TINGLEY: We'd make sure she had a sketchbook or something if we were going on vacation and she just wouldn't use it. Like, I think she just she just lost the ability to paint, which was just. Just to see the difference in the artwork. She was making. One sketch. You opened it up, and I thought it was one of the kids drawing. Like it was not her. Was not her normal work.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: What happens when a person begins to lose the things that most define them? That's children in art. Next time, on Let's Not be Kidding. You've been listening to Let's Not be Kidding from CBC Podcasts. The show is written and hosted by me, Gavin Crawford. David Carroll is my producer, story editor and sound designer. Emily Quesnel is our digital coordinating producer. Original Music by William Lamoureux. 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 3

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