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Let’s Not Be Kidding, Episode 7 Transcript

Host: Gavin Crawford

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I'm in New York and it's April 2nd, which is my birthday. For pretty much my whole adult life. My mom used to call me at seven in the morning on my birthday. Wake me up, and remind me right about now you were being born. But that hasn't happen for seven or eight years. And obviously it isn't happening this year. But it's fun being in New York shopping around, I feel like she's kind of everywhere. Just because we've been here so many times. And also she actually is here in a bag in my pocket because I brought some of her with me to leave here somewhere. Maybe. Also we just came out of seeing Sweeney Todd with Josh Groban, which is funny to me that even after she passed away, I still managed to find a way to drag her to Sondheim shows. But it's Josh Groban, so she would have loved it. I'm Gavin Crawford. This is. Let's Not Be Kidding. Episode Seven: Good Grief.

SOUNDCLIP

AURORA BROWNE: Hi, Gavin.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Hi. How's it going?

AURORA BROWNE: Oh, it's so great.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Weirdly, we're both out the other side of Alzheimer's strain in pretty close proximity to each other.

AURORA BROWNE: Very close proximity. We haven't had a huge catch up. You know, we've, like, texted a little bit, but there's.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: There's been a little bit of texting.

AURORA BROWNE: Yes.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Few inspirational J.R.R. Tolkien quotes.

AURORA BROWNE: Yes (laughing).

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Flying back and forth.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: This is a bit of a conversation I had with my friend Aurora Browne of the Baroness Von Sketch Show, who I had talked to earlier on this podcast. And weirdly, her dad actually passed away from Alzheimer's a couple of weeks after my mom did.

SOUNDCLIP

AURORA BROWNE: So that's that's foolish that.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I had to take her because news the night that my mum died that like probably like 11 in the morning. Yeah. And then I had to come in to work and tape a 90 minutes of news comedy and I was so show must go on. Like I just turned into that. Like (singinging) Your favourite uncle died at dawn, on top of that, your mom and pop are parting. You're broken heart, but you go, on. And I was like, I literally everyone was like, well, you can't come and do the show tonight. And I was like, No, you do not understand how much I have to come and do the show tonight.

AURORA BROWNE: Yeah, yeah yeah.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Show tonight because what am I going to do, sit here in a puddle of my own salty tears like.

AURORA BROWNE: Yeah, I'd love to pretend not to be me. Yes, that would be great.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Please give me a reason to pretend. Yeah, I'm like pretending to feel a way that I don't as my whole existence. That's the entire thing. I'm. This is the only thing I'm actually trained to do.

AURORA BROWNE: Yes.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I feel a little checked out, which I was not expecting. I'm not, like, depressed really about it, but it's just I don't feel like super engaged in the world right now. You know the stupid things people say after people die, like, oh, the world is like a duller place without you. But then that sort of really true. It's weird. It's a weird time. Not as weird as the immediate aftermath. I will say the immediate aftermath was something I was not prepared for because this is what they don't tell you. It's what they can't tell you is that you're going to feel happy. Alzheimer's is so terrible at the end that you're just like. At least they're not that anymore. Like, they're not trapped. Inside of themselves not being themselves anymore. And there's this crazy, overwhelming of fly free little bird. At first you think, oh, I may just kidding myself to make myself feel better about this. And then you think I must be because you don't want to feel good about it, but you genuinely feel good about it. And I talk to every member of my family, and everyone felt a little bit bad for feeling a little bit good.

SOUNDCLIP

SCOTT THOMPSON: I've had an interesting experience cause it's been two months now and I've only just realized that it was two months because I said to my brother the day when mum died, like over a month ago, he goes, two months Scott.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Scott this is Scott Thompson of Kids in the Hall of Fame who also lost his mum to dementia. She passed away just a few months before we recorded this interview.

SOUNDCLIP

SCOTT THOMPSON: I didn't fall apart, but I did put a lot of things on hold, like emails. I just decide I'm not going to answer any of these things for a while, and it just went on and on until I went, Oh my God, I let everything back up. But I didn't collapse into grief or tears or immobility or anything like that. And that kind of I went, Shouldn't I be more devastated? But the truth is, I'd been mourning her for years, like she died years ago. And of course, this is this is the real thing. But. There is a relief. And that's the hard part. That's the most difficult thing, is you have to cope with the fact that you're relieved. It's not just about you having it easier. You don't want them in that state. You don't want them to be miserable.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Well, that's the thing. Like, I don't know. I can think so many things, but I don't know if she's scared all the time. I don't know-

SCOTT THOMPSON: Yeah yeah! Scared all the time.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: what she knows. Like, I don't even care if she's sad. Yeah, I just don't want her to be scared.

SCOTT THOMPSON: Yeah, my mum was scared. Scared? Scared and sad. Lonely. And because every time I'd leave, she'd cry. And the last time I saw her, about a week before she died, she didn't even open her eyes. She'd gone that far because, you know, dementia. My mother didn't have Alzheimer's. She had dementia. But she had gone to the point where she couldn't feed herself, she couldn't drink, she couldn't. She could barely open her eyes. She could not speak at all. She basically became reduced to like a little girl who looks like an old lady doll, not even an actual old lady, An old lady doll, like an apple doll. And who just you enter a room and all she would do is kiss. She just wanted to kiss. So all the nurses and care workers, she would see them and she would just grab their faces and kiss them. That's all she wanted to do was kiss people, which I thought was kind of beautiful and go, When you see your mother reduced to her essence, her essence is love. And that was wonderful, too. It's interesting. Now she's more alive than she was the last few years, because now I can picture her in all the different times of her life and I can picture her in her prime when she was raising us, when we were like at home. And we in her fifties and sixties, in her forties, you know, I mean, her prime years when she was a phenomenal character, a phenomenal woman, this force of nature. And she's more alive to me now when I think of my mother now, I picture her when she sent me off to university or I picture her when her sister would visit. You know, I picture her when she would say Scott there's a Sidney Poitier movie on TV. Let's watch it. That was that was our thing. She loved Sidney Poitier. So if there was a Sidney Poitier movie on, we would watch it.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: And you love Sidney Poitier.

SCOTT THOMPSON: Well, I love Sidney Poitier. That's my love of black men with British accents.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Don't say you didn't get nothing. It's weird when you lose a parent to Alzheimer's because some of your feelings seem inappropriate. Like, you feel bad, but then you also, in a weird way, feel good. And then you worry, like, am I grieving enough? Like, I found myself thinking, like, is this it? Like, am I okay? I guess I'm okay. And you think for a while, like, you kind of got off scot free. That's what I sort of thought. Like, up until, like, maybe last week, you know, where I'm sort of like, Well, you know what? I've done this podcast. I've. I've really talked about my mom. I've sort of processed this, like, slow grieving, because you do you are grieving. And then I was like, maybe I maybe I've kind of done it. Like, maybe that's all that's left is the relief. You know, you've you've done each marker like you're like, I can't talk to her on the phone anymore. I can't talk to her in person anymore. She doesn't have words anymore. She can't go for a drive with me anymore. You just. You lose things inch by inch. It's like pulling strands out of a sweater until there is no sweater left. And then you think, like, okay, well, I. I've been missing that sweater for such a long time and probably not really going to miss it. But now I'm starting to feel the. The grief beyond relief.

SOUNDCLIP

AURORA BROWNE: I laughed a lot, which I needed. And you know, you need that.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: It's amazing how much you need to learn.

AURORA BROWNE: Yeah. Yeah.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: So scrolling forward. Did you have a funeral? Did you do all have all those preparations in hand and everything?

AURORA BROWNE: We put together a service. We decided that we would. We all wanted to speak. We kind of divided up by subject because he was a multifaceted guy. We got music involved because he loved live music and supported live music. My nephew sang a song. We talked about him as a dad, his struggles with mental health, his history. And I talked about him and sailing because he and I had done so much sailing. And at the end we blew a blast on the horn from his boat because a six second blast is what how you signal a boat is leaving or arriving. And so so the whole like the Frodo thing, you know, like sailing over a sunrise.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: It's like I'm getting teared up cause there's like boat, some of that boat sailing into the white shores. That was the only thing that was keeping me going.

AURORA BROWNE: Yeah.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: That. No, this is like that little speech. This is not the end. This is when the gray rain curtain pulls back and then you see it.

AURORA BROWNE: Yeah.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: In case you're not a giant nerd. Those words of comfort come from Lord of the Rings, Return of the King. I think they're also in the book somewhere, but not in the exact same way, but in the movie. Pippin and Gandalf are about to face the final war. And Pippin says, I didn't think it would end this way. And Gandalf says, End no, it doesn't end here. The gray rain curtain of this world pulls back and all turns to silver glass. And then you see it. White Shores. And beyond a far green country.

SOUNDCLIP

AURORA BROWNE: I have some questions for you, too. I wondered what happened to you physically afterwards, Because I'll tell you why. Because on one hand, I fell apart like my fingers are cracking. It was stressful. I was working, you know, like all these kind of stressful things. But on the other hand, I started feeling immediately better because the amount of my mana, you know, my life meter was being siphoned off constantly just by the worry, just knowing something might happen. And once that was done, I felt like, oh my God, like I'm I'm filling up again with, like, some endorphins. Well, how have you been? How's your body?

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Weirdly, I immediately got more handsome looks. Got quite startlingly a lot more handsome. No, I mean, initially I had, like, grief relief. And then it took about a month. And then I had a weird kind of numbness. Yeah. Which I think I maybe am sort of pulling out out of ish now.

AURORA BROWNE: Right.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: But, I mean, I was cracking jokes even at the. Literally at the interment, we had this like lovely celebration of life. We planned it all. It was lovely. We had her paintings, very people came, it was very nice. And then we got to the thing the next day and we had this little urn full of ashes because we're putting the cremains on top of her parents graves. And then all of our names are written on the back of the grave, you know, which is weird with just like our birthday and then a dash. Oh, my God. So it's just they're waiting like a weird mama. And we had to, like, we had a very weird moment. Like, we're sitting in the cemetery with, like, the person being like, Okay, well, what, what section do you want to open up? Like, are you putting on top of her dad or mom? And then we have to have this weird conversation with, like, who does she like more? You know what I mean? Like, it's me and my sisters. And we're like, I think she'd probably want to be her dad, but we're like, daughters kind of want to be in that. Or is that misogynist? We didn't like and we're having this all these weird and they do like she's literally drawing tic tac toe, like on a map of my grandparents grave being like, You got A, B, C, D, there's seven slots, one for each of you. It's sit. And then and then, you know, we're sitting there with my distraught dad, you know, and he's like, I don't know. I guess if you put her at number two and I guess I'll take number one and like a you're trying not to laugh, but it's so absurd.

SOUNDCLIP

KYLE TINGLEY: I find very odd that they bury the urn like that. They make a tiny little hole and then put y like, why do you even need I guess you need a place?

GAVIN CRAWFORD: That's Kyle Tingley, whose shoulders must be pretty sore from having me lean on them, especially during that particularly weird week.

SOUNDCLIP

KYLE TINGLEY: It seems so silly to do that. You could just keep her on the mantle or something. You don't need to put her in the ground. But there's a little hole.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: There is a bit of a conundrum because half the people wanted the ashes to just stay unmolested in the little nice urn. And some of us, meaning me, was like, I am 100% taking some of these to New York or various places around the world, because like my mom is in New York, my mom is in all the places that we traveled. And I'm like, It's symbolic. I know. But I said that to my son. I'm like, you know, it's already mixed up with pine or whatever box they did. Like, this is not it's not a pure thing. And also, mom doesn't want to stay in the ground in Lethbridge, Alberta. She didn't like it. She doesn't like the wind.

SOUNDCLIP

GAVIN CRAWFORD: So I'm like, we got to travel this. But then every day, all day, the next day, all of my siblings and a couple of like sort of very close family friends. Kyle and I were staying in the trailer in the driveway and they kept knocking on the trailer door and being like, Can I get a little scoop?

AURORA BROWNE: (laughing) For real?

KYLE TINGLEY: So then, Gavin, I just see what's Gavin doing? He's going, he's sneaking into the camper truck, camper with someone. And then I'm like, What are you doing? Oh, I had to give some of Donna to, oh, I shouldn't even say the name because everyone be really mad if they know. I think that. So he just snuck in to, like, divide Donna up a little bit. I don't know. It's so weird, but yeah, he's just sneaking off to scooper into her bag. You know, she's in a baggie in our bedroom.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: It was supposed to just be my sisters and brother and my dad at the gravesite, and we were going to just enter the little vase into the thing. And I don't know why. I thought someone would have thought of something to say or do that wasn't me. But I kind of felt like I like, you know, I did my due diligence at the memorial event the night before. And so I was kind of just like not prepared to do anything other than just like, watch the thing get put in the ground. But then, of course, because it's my mom and everyone liked my mom, like we get to the gravesite and there's 50 people there. There's like friends. There's my dad's brothers and sisters, all my aunts and uncles, cousins. It's a huge event and we've planned nothing.

SOUNDCLIP

KYLE TINGLEY: There's nothing happening. We're all at the graveyard and no one's in charge, kind of. And then Keith didn't really get up and say anything. He just kind of nudged Gav and said, okay, get up there and say things, and Gav's like what? And he's really upset because it's like the final end.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: You know, we're just standing there and the my dad's like to say something. And I'm like, I can't because now I can't talk because now it's like if feels final, it feels like a final goodbye. So I have to go up and be like, Thanks everyone for coming. This is what we're doing. And then my dad sidles up to me again. It's like, Okay, now grab your sisters and put our tongue in the ground. And I'm like, you're killing me, old man. Like to loud.

SOUNDCLIP

AURORA BROWNE: You don't have to announce to everybody what the arrangement is?

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I know. And then I'm like. So then I look at my sisters and they all immediately look at the ground. I think my one sister Raegen came up, like, to help me. And then we're like, where's the bag? Because there's like, a velvet bag with straps.

AURORA BROWNE: A velvet bag?

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Yeah, it's like a velvet bag that goes around the urn. And then my brother's like, it's in the car, and that's so we're all standing there just awkwardly while he runs back to the truck to get the velvet bag. And then, like, I'm. I'm like, lowering the thing into the ground, like, not knowing at all what to say because we hadn't really prepped anything.

AURORA BROWNE: For that moment. Yeah.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: And then everyone like the little kids, like there are some roses and from the flower arrangements the night before, as all the little kids are like throwing roses into the hole. And then we're just standing there and I'm like, okay, I guess now, in honor of Mom, we're all going to go over to the bay and just browse for 2 hours and not buy a fucking thing.

AURORA BROWNE: Oh my god I love that.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: It's like, really cut the tension.

KYLE TINGLEY: And then they're like, okay, let's all have a photo around the grave. It's like, What? And now one with the kids. Like it was like a wedding photos around the gravestone. And like, what is happening? Is this how this is happened? Is this what people do? What are you going to look at this photo for? Like I like I don't want to see this photo ever again.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Like, we're like, at this fucking grad ceremony. But anyways, I'm try to keep my cool, but I'm on the verge of just like, you know, everything bubbling up. And then I just, like, go and stand behind a tree, and then I realize, like, I cannot be there for one more second. And I just grab Kyle and I'm like, Get in the car. Drive, drive! But it was nice. I mean, the weirdest thing was you always say, like, we always were like, Oh yeah, our mom is like mother to were like, we kept having to say in the eulogy, like, you know, she was a mom to us, but like also to a number of people, but the number of people who kind of came up and would just be like, I don't know if you know this, but like, you know, your mom's the one that got me out of my first abusive relationship. She drove to Edmonton and, you know, hustled me out of the house in the middle of the night or, you know, someone reacted like, I don't know if you know this, but your mom was the one that took me to rehab or I don't know if you know this, but like your mom bail me out of jail like three times. And like that happened like such a number of times. Like, I'm not saying she was a saint, but she was definitely like the person people would go to when they couldn't tell anybody else what was going on. And she was pretty good at keeping it a secret because I didn't know. I started to be expecting someone to come up and be like, I don't know if you know this, but like your mom and I buried a body. Your mom's the one that helped me murder my abusive husband. We put him in the trunk and drove him to the lake.

SOUNDCLIP

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I mean, last time you were talking, you kind of very eloquently described your dad and what was happening with him as a pointillist painting.

AURORA BROWNE: Oh, yeah.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: What kind of painting is he to you now?

AURORA BROWNE: Oh, that is a really good, um. I guess he's back to being a complete painting. He's. He's not even a painting anymore. He's everywhere. He's. He's sailing somewhere. This is what I think of it. So he's together and he's 3D, and he's out doing what he loves. My dad has or I've tucked him into so many other places in the world because of sailing, I've talked him into the weather and the sky. So pretty much any time it sounds dodgy, any time the wind blows, I do think of my dad because I think of sailing and I can just think about him like standing on the boat. Steering the boat.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: It's nice.

AURORA BROWNE: Yeah.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: It's the same thing for me with my mom because she's not in a place. Like, I can just think of her everywhere. Like, even yesterday, I was just. I was filling the car up with gas, and I just, like. I don't know, I just started thinking about my mom, and then I was just like, Oh, I can just say hi. So then I just was like, standing at the gas pump and I was like, I just kind of looked up at this sky a little bit and I was like, hey, Mom.

AURORA BROWNE: Yeah.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: And then weirdly, just as I did that, I looked up and there was like, this tree. And then a gust of wind blew and the tree branch kind of like, went up and down. And my mom always used to, like, tell people, like, of you, you know, if you're missing someone, just look at a tree because that's them waving at you. And that tree was just like waving. And I knew, you know, a blizzard was coming. So. (Aurora laughs) But there was a part of me that was like. So I just like, you know, I waved at the tree and it made me have a little smile that I got back in the car. And Kyle was like, what are you smiling at? And I was like, Literally nothing. You don't want to know.

AURORA BROWNE: Yeah, I guess your mom's like, Ben Kenobi. You become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Yeah.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: At the beginning of this, I'm sort of asking the question, like, why am I even doing this? Like, partly. I was like, well, I, I wanted to, I need to talk about it just as a steam valve release. But then I'm also like, Who, who is this for? Who cares? Like, Oh, sure. Come and be sad about someone you don't even know. But then I was like, So I started to think of it as like an FAQ or like a walk through, you know, video game.

SOUNDCLIP

AURORA BROWNE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Where you're like, you're playing a game and then you're just like, I wonder if anyone else had trouble with this.

AURORA BROWNE: But yes. And you go online, there's a thousand videos.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: And there's like a thousand people being like

AURORA BROWNE: Here's my run through a level A.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I was like, oh my God, this wall is so frustrating. Like, is anyone else having trouble getting up this wall?

AURORA BROWNE: Everybody's having trouble, everyone is having trouble. I just try to look at life now is the same way that the the feelings in Inside Out would look at the wall of little moments of Riley's day. And like if you had more joy than the other ones, that was a good day. And I've been reading The Silmarillion and thinking about the Silmarillion a lot and about Tolkien and what he says about, like the gift of death that elves don't have. Elves are, you know, they're immortal unless you kill them. But even then, they get to persist in in spirit form, but they don't know what in Tolkien, what happens to humans because they just die. They don't go to the halls of Mando's. But there's a a the bittersweet quality of that is actually a gift that life is can be sweeter when it's in smaller bits and we have this very small bit. And so I just kind of committed to like making it sweet every moment and telling my sisters that I love them and, you know, doing work that I enjoy because we could get hit by a bus tomorrow or we could catch COVID tomorrow.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Or we could slowly, very, very slowly, the process of a number of years begin to forget everything we've ever known.

AURORA BROWNE: (laughing) Exactly. So I better enjoy it now.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I'll take the bus.

AURORA BROWNE: I'd take the bus as well.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I was going to say, like, if there if it's an option, I'd take the bus.

Well. Well, I don't know if I need to say anything.

KYLE TINGLEY: Well, I don't know if you'd say anything. I'm just like, Are you going to do that?

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Yeah. Yeah. Hold this. Okay. I can't open it.

KYLE TINGLEY: (bag crinkling) Don't spill it.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: I'm going to put at the root of the street. Just a little bit.

KYLE TINGLEY: Okay. There you go.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Now you're part of a tree. Well.

KYLE TINGLEY: Oh, my God. Your pants are filthy.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: That'll wash.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Well, we've dropped mom in the summer in New York in an undisclosed location for legal reasons. But it's somewhere where I know where it is. And it's near shops.

SOUNDCLIP

KYLE TINGLEY: Everywhere's near shops.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: That's why she would like it if I asked her if she wanted to stay in southern Alberta or rather be take some of it in New York. I know exactly what she's saying.

KYLE TINGLEY: New York. Of course.

GAVIN CRAWFORD: Southern Alberta, as is Charles. But, you know, let's not be kidding. Be around. Implausibly. I think I finally have run out of things to say. So I guess just let me say this. I want to give a huge, heartfelt thanks to everybody who spoke to me for this podcast. Jann Arden, Scott Thompson, Aurora Browne, Frank Webb, Rachel Matlow, Norm McClellan, JP LaRock, Kerry Sacconi, David Carroll, my amazing producer, Dr. Sharon Cohen. Of course, my dad, Keith Crawford, my sister Raegan and all my other siblings for contributing in ways that aren't necessarily on tape. And of course, my rock of the last 30 years, Kyle Tingley. And I want to thank every one of you who listened to these seven episodes. I hope that they were fun or at least helpful. And if not, I don't know. I guess just forget they ever happened. 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 story editor, producer and sound designer. Emily Quesnel is our digital coordinating producer. Original Music by William Lemire. Our senior producer is Daemon Fairless. Our podcast Art was designed by Tara Paquette. Cross-Promote producer Amanda Cox. Our video producer is Evan Aagaard. Audio mastering was done by the Master, Pete Morey. Special thanks to Elizabeth Valley, Betty Burke and Shawna Watson, executive producers Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oke. Tanya Springer is our senior manager. Arif Noorani is the director and Lesley Merklinger is the executive director of CBC Podcasts.

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Transcript of Let's Not Be Kidding, Episode 7

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