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Let’s Not Be Kidding, Episode 5 Transcript

Host: Gavin Crawford

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

AURORA BROWNE: One of the things he liked to do was go and look at cars, you know, that he might buy, because that was always kind of a thing for him. You know, he like, you know, occasionally would happen. He'd come home with the new car when I was a kid.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Here I'm talking to my friend Aurora Browne from Baroness Von Sketch Show, who's experiencing Alzheimer's with her father right now.

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AURORA BROWNE: So one of the things we would do together in the fall of 2020 is like go and stop at the the Subaru place and just kind of look at cars. And you like to have that chat with people that will.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Always on pins and needles, like when they say, let's go for a test drive.

AURORA BROWNE: Well, it wasn't until this one day because he's like, I'm going to go in and talk to the guy. So I said, okay, I'll stay with the car. And then he'd been gone for a while and I got out of the car and walked and just happened to intercept my dad, pulling out, like pulling up to the exit in a new Subaru, going for a test drive by himself in a car like so far from his car, as far as like there's computers. Like it's, you know, it's a smartphone basically with a car around it. And I was like, what? And I was so mad at him, you know, I got in with him and helped him and stuff like that. But I was like, I can't believe you're you know, it was one of the few times I allowed my anger to kind of unload on him, and he was so crestfallen. I felt awful.

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 Five: Hide the Keys. One of the things that you come to learn about Alzheimer's is that although it doesn't exactly move in a linear direction, it doesn't ever go backwards. I mean, the memories kind of go backwards, but the condition slowly marches on. And there comes a point, I think, well, there's a point in everyone's aging process, whether or not they have Alzheimer's, that they probably shouldn't drive anymore.

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GAVIN CRAWFORD: No one in our family could take my mother's keys away because she driving was such a huge part of her identity that we couldn't do it for so much longer than we knew we should. Like when she's driving into the oncoming lane of traffic and we're still like, you know what if she needs to nip to the store? It just makes you think, oh, Lord, how many people are out there right now driving cars?

AURORA BROWNE: Oh, yeah.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Not knowing what a car is.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Driving was a very central part of my mom's existence. Growing up, she would always say, Get your license. You have to get your license for her it meant freedom. My mom used to like to do a thing called a non destination vacation where she would just pile us in the car with suitcases and start driving somewhere. We didn't know where. I don't even know if she knew where and we would just drive somewhere. Sometimes it was, you know, towards Kelowna or Vancouver. We drive to B.C. We'd spend a couple of days in the Okanagan, just her and the kids. Usually when my dad was at a golf tournament. I think it might have been like some weird payback of him having to go do something and her just being like, Well, I'm not sitting here doing nothing. She needed to know that at any point in time she could get in the car and just get the hell out of Dodge, as she used to say. And my mom was kind of a bad ass driver. I remember once we were driving over top of a very steep mountain pass, going to the sun road in Glacier National Park, and the brakes failed. And we were going down a mountain road. And I remember my mom very clearly saying like, hang on, hang on, everyone, hang on, hang on to something. We're going to have to crash into the side. And she had to ditch us on the side of the mountain and let the car get scraped by bushes and dirt to stop the car. And then she got out and some motorcycle riders were coming behind us, A bunch of Harley-Davidson guys, you know, they were like, are you okay? Is everything okay? And I remember my mom saying, like, yeah, we just need a tow truck and, you know, we got to go get some help. And she told us not to move and just stay in the car as she hopped on the back of a Harley Davidson and drove off with the motorcyclist. You know, and then eventually came back. But, you know, she was she knew how to deal with shit.

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KEITH CRAWFORD: Like once or twice. Even after I wouldn't drive anymore, I would let her drive me over to Safeway's. And I thought we were going to get killed on the way there. You know, So that was it. That was once that happened, that was no more driving, Don.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: This is my dad, Keith Crawford.

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KEITH CRAWFORD: She followed me to Reagan's on time from, in Calagary she was supposed to follow me in a truck. And then I see her turning off, and she went and got lost there. I had to go searching around, looking for looking for the car. I finally just happened to find it. So that was pretty scary too.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: But we never took the keys. She always had the car keys. We just had the car.

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KEITH CRAWFORD: She kept asking me, Well, where's my car? Where's my car? And I used to say, Well, someone borrowed it, you know, and then. Then she forgot, you know, and then her driver's license expired, so.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I remember her calling me and being furious. Well, your father's hidden the car. So I guess I'm just trapped here.

RACHEL MATLOW: Right.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: And I'm like, Well, Mom, you know, you did drive all the way home from water colors in the wrong lane of traffic the other day, which is like there was construction.

RACHEL MATLOW: Yeah, exactly. It's always an excuse.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: It's always something. And my mom...

RACHEL MATLOW: I didn't see the one way sign.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: No. My mom once turned like a left turn right into oncoming traffic in Calgary and, like, mom we're in the wrong lane. She was like, Oh, they keep changing this intersection.

RACHEL MATLOW: Right.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Like, yeah, I think that's not at all. This is producer and author Rachel Matlow talking about the moment they had to take the keys from their dad.

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RACHEL MATLOW: It's so bizarre. There's so many things that I still am trying to figure out.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: So you said he doesn't have a driver's license currently, did you?

RACHEL MATLOW: Oh, god no.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Did you guys actively stop him

RACHEL MATLOW: That was the first to.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: From driving.

RACHEL MATLOW: Yeah, I turned him in as he likes to remind me. Yeah, that was because that was just like, you know, there's just certain things where it's like, I can't put other people at risk. I see what's happening. And so I spoke to his doctor, and then that's when he went for one of those memory tests, and that's when they were pretty clear that that's what this is. And so at that point, that was devastating for him. It really was.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: This is the point in the disease where things get increasingly difficult because you have to make hard choices and you have to do things that make your loved one mad at you for their own safety. And it isn't fun, to paraphrase a certain saying, it's only funny until someone loses the car.

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AURORA BROWNE: My dad was still driving, which sounds I know that sounds counterintuitive, but that was one of the things that he could still do. And so we were loathed to take away things that he could still do.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Again, that's Aurora Browne from Baroness Von Sketch show.

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AURORA BROWNE: I mean, we we changed it. So we're always in the car with him because it would happen sometimes that he didn't remember where the button said put down the windows. But there was this one day where I was in the kitchen and he came down and he said, well, I have to go to work. And we were very conscientious of the fact that you're not supposed to or it's counterproductive to try to get the person to remember like, Daddy, now, you know, you don't have it. So I just was like, okay, let me dry my hands. I'll go with you to your office where you have to go. And I was really curious to see how this would play out because I thought, Well, I'm in the car with him. I can grab the wheel or whatever, like I can keep him physically safe. But let's find out actually, like, how is he going to think through this? So I got in the car with him. It was really calm. And then he was like, okay, which way is the office? And I was like, where do you think it is? And he's like, I think I turn right. I was like, okay, So we turn right, and I guess I could hear the wheels spinning in his head at this point. And he was like, where is my office. And that's when I was like, Well, actually you haven't had an office for about ten years. He's like, Yeah, I thought so. It was crazy like hearing him go in and try to work things out.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I remember talking to my mom once on the phone and going to this weird dance where I was trying to hype her up about how great it was to be a passenger. You know, just being like, Yeah, but I mean, just think about it. You can just sit back and relax, like having a chauffeur. Like, you don't have to worry about the traffic. You can go wherever you want. Like, think of it as having your own personal driver. Only it's dad. Anything I could think of to try to make it not seem so bad. But it just was bad because I knew that that meant she was losing her independence and she knew that she was losing independence. And my mom has always been very independent.

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KEITH CRAWFORD: She was very, very determined. She had an idea of what she wanted. She went after it and she could do it, you know. She wanted decided to go to university to finish her degree. She went to university and finished her degree. They started to learn how to do welding for an art project. She learned how to do welding. She decided to be a painter. She became a painter. She was very, very determined. You know, she still pretty determined, actually. That's what they say. And busy. She could, your mom's a great multitasker. I'm sure your mom could do ten things at a time and do all ten of them without a slip up in any of them. She could do them all.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: None of us ever saw my mum cry. She would never cry in public. The only place my mum would ever cry is by herself in the car. I would know if she was upset about something, if she went for a drive, because you could see that she maybe had been crying when she came back. But she hid it extremely well.

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GAVIN CRAWFORD: When did you or like members of your family, be like, oh no, this is definitely Alzhiemer's.

RACHEL MATLOW: Yeah. So the driving was a bit off.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: This is Rachel Matlow again.

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RACHEL MATLOW: But the one of the weirdest things was my dad developed this obsession with tights he loves to wear, like men's sports tights, like, spandex, the kind of tights that if a man wears, he should definitely be wearing shorts on top of them. Unless he's like in the Tour de France. You know? Just not appropriate dress wear. And I remember, like, maybe ironically, we had tickets. We went to see The Fun Home, the musical that based on Alison Bechdel's memoir, like about her dad. Yeah. And he showed up to the theater in tights.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: In like, lycra tights?

RACHEL MATLOW: In, lycra tights. And I was just a little bit like, you know, I try not to be embarrassed by my parents, you know, anymore, but I was just like, really? And I think I made fun of him and he got so sensitive and ran home and it was a whole thing. But and since then, he's just been stockpiling them and he wears a lot of that white ones that are quite sheer. So it literally looks like he's walking around in his underwear and there'd be sightings. A lot of times people would call like me or my brother and be like, we saw your dad today, how to put this. But I think he was wearing his underwear in the village. I just want to make sure everything's all right.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: And your brother's. Isn't your brother a city councilor? Yeah.

RACHEL MATLOW: I mean, like, for me, I'm like, whatever. But for him, it's like he has constituents riding him with, like, the subject line is, like, delicate matter. We saw your dad today. Yeah.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I realized it wasn't just our family, but for everyone. This question of when do you take away the keys is a really hard call. So I sought out some expert advice.

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SHARON COHEN: There isn't one answer, but the overarching principle is when somebody is at risk to hurt themselves or someone else on the road. So public safety is the guiding principle.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: This is Dr. Sharon Cohen, a behavioral neurologist and the medical director of Toronto Memory Program.

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SHARON COHEN: I think it's safe to say when people get to the stage of Alzheimer's where they are needing help with basic personal care, like dressing, feeding themselves, toileting, bathing, that driving window has gone at the milder stage. There's a quite a bit of variability. And we do think the gold standard is a road test. And so people will actually do an on road test with an instructor or an examiner and see if there are problems with driving or not. But for a patient who really still can drive and that's the way they can stay involved and connected with friends and family and go to church or whatever it is they would like to do. And you wrap them up that if they really were still safe, then you're finding them to a much smaller world and maybe more precipitous decline in their state because they're more disconnected.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: It did seem to me that after my mom stopped driving, there was a bit of an acceleration and decline. It was shortly after she couldn't drive the car anymore, that she just started wanting to go. And at first we weren't sure even where she wanted to go. She would only sit for maybe 10 minutes at a time, no matter where we were. If it was at her own house in Lethbridge, if she was at my sister's house in Calgary, wherever she was, she would just after about 10 minutes, kind of grab her purse and be like, well, I mean, let's get going. We should probably (clicks tongue) hit the road. The little clicks meant she was getting impatient, and it became increasingly difficult because there was nowhere to go. At first we would take her around the block or distract and say like, yeah, we'll head out in a bit, but let's have a cup of tea. But it just became increasingly frequent. But she just always wanted to go.

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RAEGAN: She liked going out for lunch and stuff. So we would do that or go for a drive or whatever.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: My sister Raegan.

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RAEGAN: So me and Bridget and Mom went to the jasmine tea room and they like all these teas. And so like I got her a tea and they had this like, cool, like biscuits with their homemade jam. Like she would have loved it. And then she's like, I just can we just get out of here? Like, she was so annoyed at how cluttery and like, there was this porcelin everywhere and Bridget's drinking her tea and mum's like, just, like, dying. And then I'm like, Isn't this place awesome she's like, yeah, it's really nice. She's like, we better get going though. And I'm like, well no, we have nowhere to go. Like, we're fine. Like we were here. It's totally fine. And she'd be like, well, I just, you know, I just need to get out of here. Here. It was like, so funny.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: That's when things start to get a little dark because there isn't much that you can do as a carer other than try to distract them and calm them because it didn't ever seem to go away and the agitation would increase. I remember vividly once we were at my brother's at Thanksgiving and all of my family was there and all of the kids were there and it was quite loud and we were having a big Thanksgiving dinner at my brother's house in Calgary, and I could see my mom getting irritated by the kids, which is new because kids don't irritate my mother, especially her own grandchildren. But it was getting loud and I could see her moving towards the door and kind of searching for her jacket. Not sure which one it was. And I looked at Kyle and I kind of raised my eyebrows. And sure enough, very shortly after that, she announced very loudly like, well, this was great, but I gotta (clicks tongue) get going. And so Kyle and I just said, Yeah, we got to go too. And we just sort of grabbed our coats and piled her into the car and then just went for a drive in Calgary as if we were going home and kind of drove up to the ridge and went for a little walk along the path. And it was very funny. I have a very funny picture because she asked us if we wanted her to take our picture. The picture is very funny because we are not in the frame. There's four or five pictures of, you know, I think it's the very top of Kyle's head or maybe our feet. But yeah, we just drove her around until she sort of started to say sorry. Like, maybe be getting back. The driving trick didn't always work, particularly if it was a longer drive like the time we tried to take my mom to Waterton National Park, which is only about an hour and a half away from Lethbridge. And it's beautiful and it's in the Rockies. And my mom used to love to go there and Kyle had never seen it. So I thought, you know what, let's take her on a little trip. It didn't go exactly how we planned.

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KYLE TINGLEY: Well, it just became clear that she didn't know where she was. Sometimes she didn't know who we were. And we just felt like we were kidnaping her, like she would just ask leading questions, like from the backseat. You'd just hear, like, what direction is this? Wait, this isn't the way home. As panicked as she would sound, because she's always so polite, like you just kind of got the feeling that she wasn't sure what was happening. Like, she didn't have that comfort that she's with people. Her tone changed, like to something she would say to a stranger, not what she would say to someone she obviously knew who it was. So it became clear we were kidnaping her. Then we were trying to take her to Fort MacLeod, just because she's always saying, I just got to get back to home to Fort MacLeod. I've got kids at home in Fort MacLeod. And so we were driving through Fort MacLoed like, well, here we are in Fort MacLeod. No, this isn't it.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: She was like this? No, no, that's not Fort MacLeod.

KYLE TINGLEY: And then we're like, Oh, shit. Fort MacLeod just became something that didn't exist. Only existed in her memory. Like it didn't match her memory. So it's like she was in a different time with it.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I remember desperately putting on Helen Reddy's greatest hits, you know, just in the hope that I could distract her enough with I Am Woman Hear me roar. To just keep from panicking that we were some strangers abducting her to a new land. And it worked for a certain amount of time. But then, of course, that stupid Helen Reddy Me and You against the World song came on. It's like the mom and the kid. And then I started bursting into tears. So I'm driving and like, trying not to, like, look like I'm bawling my eyes out. And Kyle's like, sitting in the back, like, just being like, oh, well, I can't wait till we get back to your house. We're on our way to the house. Meanwhile, I'm just like, you and me against the world. We used to listen to this. The needing to go thing got worse and worse and harder and harder, particularly for my dad, who is often there alone with my mom at home. And then the sun would set and she would grab her purse and say to my dad, you know, shouldn't we (clicks tongue) get going? Like. I got to get home.

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KEITH CRAWFORD: She didn't think this was our house. I mean, she. She designed this house and built everything in it. And I could not convince her that this was her house. She wrote a note to her grandmother saying it was nice. We're sorry that we missed her, that we when we stayed at her house and that we'd see her next time. And her grandmother has been dead for sixty years, you know.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I remember my dad would call me or one of my other siblings and be quite beside himself, just desperate to say like, you know, could you just please tell your mother I'm me. And we all had a sort of different way of dealing with it. Sometimes I would try and say, like, Mom, that's dad. Oftentimes I wouldn't. Oftentimes, I made up the most outlandish lies. One that worked quite often would be to tell her that the bridge was out. I'd be like, I just saw on the news that the bridge is out and you can't get back to Fort MacLeod tonight because the bridge is washed out. There's been a flash flood, so I guess you just have to like you're safe there. Everybody's fine. Just hang out for a half an hour and I'll call you back and see if they fix the bridge. And then she would be like, oh, yeah, Well, I mean, you can't drive on the bridge is out.

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KEITH CRAWFORD: It was awful. It was like I, you know, I, I did everything I could to try and distract her. But she was determined, you know, how determined she was, what she was as determined to do, what she thought as she was doing. Well, I'll just I'll just go down and get the bus and and take the bus. I said, well, the bus doesn't go there anymore. Well, then I'll just watch while it's blizzarding outside. Well, I don't care. I'll just die on the side of the road. You know, higher back fences. She went out the front door and climbed over the back fence.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: What?

KEITH CRAWFORD: Yeah. I had to find her.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I mean, it sounds hyperbolic, but the weird thing is my mom's grandfather did freeze to death on the side of the road when my grandmother was eight on Christmas Eve. He had gone out to deliver presents. Story was always that he got too drunk and lost his way in a blizzard. But now, knowing what happened to my grandmother, his daughter and my mom, his granddaughter. In retrospect, it seems pretty clear that it probably wasn't the booze.

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KEITH CRAWFORD: I guarantee you he had Alzheimer's. It was just undiagnosed as he had several episodes where he would disappear for like a week at a time. And and then he would finally remember and you'd show up, you know? So that's what happened to him.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Okay, great. Well, so much for the hope that this only happens to the women in my family. Alzheimer's comes in, fits and starts, and you try to find the humor wherever you can. But there does come a point where it's harder and harder because shit literally starts to get real. I wanted to maximize the time that I wanted to. I knew it was starting to happen so her and my dad would come and visit us.

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GAVIN CRAWFORD: But, you know, there was sort of a good like two year period where, you know, she just wouldn't shower. She would insist that she had had a shower like, ah, you know, and you're like, Mom, you've been here for a week and a half. And I know that you haven't had a shower, but like, she's like, I just washed my. You know, and then, you know, you'd have to do these weird tricks or I'd be like, oh, I'm playing a hairdresser in this thing. And I got to practice washing hair and I don't have anybody to practice on. Yeah, you know, and mom would be like, well, I guess you could, I suppose you could practice on me.

AURORA BROWNE: And that worked amazing!

GAVIN CRAWFORD: You know? And then you just, like, wash her hair under the tap. I never got to the point where I had to give her, like, a full shower. I used to turn the water on, and then I would have a shower, and then I would get out of the shower and be like. The like the water in this house takes forever to heat up. You've got to jump in the shower right now while it's still running, because I don't want to like, if I turn it back off, it's going to be 3 hours before it's hot again. And then I just I sort of hustler into the bathroom and then wait outside with the towel and I could sometimes get her to do it that way.

AURORA BROWNE: This is awful to talk about for some people, but the threshold of incontinence is a huge one for most people. That is usually what makes people decide, like, okay, I can, I can take up to here, but I'm going to put person away. And like there's a sister of mine who just can't deal with that stuff, even really hear about it, which I get. But even that, like I've worked on a farm, I've shoveled manure, we've had a baby, like, we can talk about this too kind of thing. It stood me in good stead anyway.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Yeah, I don't know. I feel like after you've done a number of commercial auditions, there's no level of humiliation.

AURORA BROWNE: (laughing) That you can't deal.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: That you can't deal with.

JANN ARDEN: Yeah, nobody wants to do that for their parents.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Singer songwriter Jann Arden.

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JANN ARDEN: You know that famous adage, well, they did it for us. They changed our diapers. So I always kept thinking of that when friends would say that full circle.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: But it's not as cute.

JANN ARDEN: They're not tiny, little chubby, cute beings that, you know, when a six week year old pees in your face. It's a far cry from.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Yeah. Also, a six week old doesn't usually say, what the hell are you doing?

JANN ARDEN: Yeah, stop that. You're killing me. Who's got my money? Who took my fur coat.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: So you did end up putting your mom into a long term care home? JANN ARDEN: Yeah, it got to medical and especially when you don't. I didn't have friends looking after mom. I had, you know, regular people and I was working like I traveled 250 days a year, and I'm trying to figure out how to, hey, I've got to pay for my mom so I can't stop working because this is costing me $22,000 a month to keep her in the house. Here at home, people are always like, No, that can't be right. Do the math. 24 hours a day, $25 an hour at least, sometimes 30. And so you six full time people basically around the clock. And then I would take her when I was home from four till like eight. And at the at the end of those 4 hours, I was like. Holy shit. I'd have to go to the bathroom so fast she'd be vaulted out the front door. You know, I made the mistake. I used to have a fire in here once in a while when she was here, because she liked to have a nice fire. And I came out from the bathroom. I must have been gone 40 seconds instead of 20. And she was carrying the clamp tool, like carrying a lit log, just walking through the kitchen. And I screamed, and thank God she didn't drop the log. I was just like, Mom, she goes what? This is how we always do it. And I didn't get mad. I'm like, oh, well, I forgot that. Well, let let's put it back. Where do you want to put that? Well, I don't know. Where do you normally put a burning log? And so I flew the grates open and instead of being just like so mad, I mean, I was definitely scared, but I was laughing. I just like, oh, my God, that could have been really, really bad.

KEITH CRAWFORD: Remember when we went to Aruba and I was I mean, I think mom enjoyed that, but still was. That's why I thought it would have been nice for me to quit work a few years earlier because we could have done more. So she liked to travel. That would have been fun for her to do that. We did a couple of times. We went on, we went on a like a non destination vacation downtown. We just got in a car and drove. And she really liked that, you know. And we drove back from, you know, we we drove through Canada all the way back from Toronto that one time. And it was fun. She liked that. That's what I. In fact, I never told you that. But that's one of the things that I used to do with her a lot when she was really bad. I would just bundle up and we'd get in the car and we'd just drive and we drive all over the place, you know? And she just loved doing that, you know, like she was happy to do that. That would distract her perfectly. So we drove out to, you know, Fort MacLeod or go to Glenwood or drive up to Calgary and just she just loved doing that so that was good.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: It's cliché advice, but honestly, do everything you can with the person while you can, because there just comes a time for whatever reason when you can't. And. You end up being really glad about whatever you could do. You are like, mom, like, you don't really talk about the sad parts where you kind of talk about it, but you don't cry.

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RAEGAN: No, not really. I just cry by myself in the car. And I

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Oh God! You are exactly like her. This is my sister Raegan again.

RAEGAN: Even at work, I was like, Oh, alright. You're not like, I'm like, I've done all my crying in the car on the way here.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: But why?

RAEGAN: I don't know. I just like. It makes me feel better. It doesn't make me feel better crying. Like with others, I just. I makes me feel better crying on my own.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: What things, like during this time can you do that you like actually, like, take a little bit of joy in?

RAEGAN: Things I would say it is just like you're like, oh, I'm really glad that I did all the cool stuff. Like, you're really glad you took Mom and all those trips because now, like, you just like, realize that, like she's not going to be able to do that. That is different than someone maybe just dying, like.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Yeah.

RAEGAN: Or like but they're still alive. But everywhere I go is somewhere I've gone with Mom everywhere, so.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Yeah, I know. It's (laughing and crying) I, I was crying in Mount Royal yesterday and I was just like, Oh, this is where Bobby used to take me to get all my preppy clothes. Yeah, but before I came out, they actually cared what I dressed like.

RAEGAN: I have everywhere I go, like, everywhere I've taken mom on the walk back and there, (indistinct, emotional) every, everywhere I go, I get her every single place. So it's really sad. But it's also like, pretty good because then everywhere I go, I still have a memory of being there with her. (emotional pause) I'm going for a drive.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: (laughs)

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Coming up next time on Let's Not Be kidding.

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UNNAMED: There's so much sad already like that awful moment when when you have to leave your parent. And, you know, you get to the door and you know, the key code to get out and and your parent is standing there with you and you enter the key code and you open the door and you try to slip through it, It's like, okay, okay, goodbye. Goodbye. And and they want to come with you. And you literally had to close the door in their face.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Yeah. There's no way for you not to feel like you're a villain in a Roald Dahl book, dropping their kid off at some horrible boarding school called, like Miss Murders, Murderous boarding school. You know what I mean? And then the kids there, and you're like, All right, see you later, Charlie. Well, you'll be home at home for Christmas. And meanwhile, there's, like, you know, a creepy janitor with a big pair of scissors behind going like, we'll take good care of him.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: What happens when there's no safe place to be except the place you least wannabe? The bus stop at the end of the world. That's 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 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 5

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