Front Burner - Front Burner Introduces: Let’s Not Be Kidding with Gavin Crawford

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

If laughter really was the best medicine, Gavin Crawford would have cured his mother of Alzheimer’s disease. As a son, his mother’s dementia has been devastating. As a comedian though…it’s been sort of funny. Honestly, how do you respond when your mom confuses you with her teenage crush and wants you to take her to the high-school dance? Well, you laugh. Because it’s the only thing you can do. In this seven-part series, Gavin tells the story of losing his mother — his best friend and the inspiration for a lot of his comedy — to a disease that can be as hilarious as it is heartbreaking. He’s joined by comedian friends who share their experience caring for family members with dementia. The result is a cross between an improv act and a support group. Part memoir, part stand-up, part meditation on grief and loss, Let’s Not Be Kidding is a dose of the very best medicine for anyone dealing with hard times. More episodes are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/bBtOceaA

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi there, Alex Panetta here. We have a special bonus episode for frontburners podcast subscribers today from the brand new cbc podcast let's not be kidding it's the story about a comedian his mom and her dementia if laughter really was the best medicine gavin crawford would have cured his mother of alzheimer's disease as a son his mother's dementia has been devastating. As a comedian, though, it's been sort

of funny. Honestly, how do you respond when your mom confuses you with her teenage crush and wants you to take her to the high school dance? Well, you laugh because it's the only thing you can do. In this seven-part series, Gavin tells the story of losing his mother, his best friend and the inspiration for a lot of his comedy to a disease that can be as hilarious as it is heartbreaking. He's joined by comedian friends who share their experience caring for family members

with dementia. The result is a cross between an improv act and a support group. Part memoir, part stand-up, part meditation on grief and loss let's not be kidding is a dose of the very best medicine for anyone dealing with hard times we have the first episode for you right now have a listen 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, well, can I, I guess I'll just have a Coke. Maybe like the sandwich, I guess. Maybe the sandwich. And constantly the servers are like,

I'm sorry, pardon me. I just didn't quite catch the end of it. And you would always have to be like, 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 loudly, like, how do you like to have hair like that? And you're like, what, it's backwards, mom. Like, 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's the voice she used. My name is Gavin Crawford. I'm a comedian, an actor, and a writer.

I came up through Second City. I had my own show on Comedy Network. I was on The Sour Ass 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, or you might not remember me at all. If you're my mother. And that's what this podcast is about. So what is this going to be called? 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 laying it on the line. So I'm tentatively calling it that, but I don't know. 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. It's like comedians and cars getting caught. It's like comedians, cars talking about Alzheimer's. Maybe that's what you should call it. Yeah. That's basically what it's turned out to be. I know. I'm constantly... This is Rachel Matlow, podcast producer and author of the memoir, Dead Mom Walking.

It's just a lot. It is a lot. Where's your mother at right now? She is in Lethbridge in a home in a care facility. Besides the location, like where's she at in her head? 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. There's a lot of staring off into the distance. Occasionally she'll sort of know who you are. I just do a lot of holding her hand until she gets annoyed and then wants to like push her wheelchair around in a circle for a while. Yeah, so it sounds, yeah, she's further along than my dad. I mean, I find myself just joking, making jokes because...

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, she's fine. We're fine. Next subject. Anyone seen any good movies lately? Do you want a coffee or something? 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 you would swear. Because you 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 spices down.

She was like, these spices. Like, she would just do that. She was like, oh, for fakes, Gavin. What did I have to put up with this? She would just 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. This was way early on like back when I was still kind of like the interloper that wrecked his first relationship. That's Kyle. My mom and he had a pretty tight relationship. But we were at the IHOP and and we were just looking at the video, and she's like, oh, Kyle, you might enjoy the rollover fruit slam. And everyone was like, what? Mom? And then she's like, what? It's got strawberries and blueberries. I know Kyle likes that.

Everyone was laughing, and you can't tell with her if she was just, you was just making a suggestion genuinely or if she was being a... I tend to think it was intentional. kind of bedraggled after a party one time. And my mom, there was a lot of people sitting in the living room, and my mother just said, wow, you look like you've been rode hard and pulled 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 her eye, she knew what she was saying. She really did have shitty luck when it came to health and had a lot of cancer and stuff. She never liked to be cooped up. She always loved to be able to go and do what she wanted.

This is my youngest sister, Regan, who, personality--wise is probably the most like my mom. 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 what's happening now is surprising only in the fact that my mom has been through so much already.

She always seemed 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 us so long as a family to kind of really face up to what was actually happening. Because, I mean, my mom would definitely forget things. But, you know, she had 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 what my mom was like before she was like what she's like now. My mom, Donna Jean Anderson, was born in 1944 in Fort McLeod, 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 McLeod. So if you picture one main road with a few little houses and erase the hot gay cowboys. That's Fort McLeod. 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 grad 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 a magazine. She still loves a magazine. Except now she likes to rip the pages out.

She was awesome. She was cool and hilarious and irreverent and incredibly caring without being a smotherer. This is Carrie Sackney, who's known both me and my mom since grade six. 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. We always had strays. 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. 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 into 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 not 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. I'm 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. Twelve 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. And my dad put me in t-ball and baseball and hockey and judo, hoping any manly thing would stick. Uh, it did not. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem.

Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to,

50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. 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 Strombolopoulos. Welcome to the show, man. It's nice to see you. Hey, nice to meet you. Alright, so, when you were going to, did you fit in in your hometown? Did you have a moment where you looked around

and went, I've got to get out of here? The things that I want to do, this isn't working for me here. Oh, no, there was tons of little gay kids in southern Alberta. Like, you know, I'm the only kid probably that asked for the soundtrack to Evita for, like, my 12th birthday. And then, like, when the girl that I liked at the time

didn't go out with me, you know, I would drive around. Like, at 16, driving around, I'd be like, don't cry for me, Sarah Miller The truth is I never liked you And oddly that did turn out to be true. I liked her brother Paul What can you do? It happens that way Because of the pandemic, I wasn't able to travel back to Alberta for almost 18 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.

Well, we're finished this raita. This one probably tastes good. Or has it? Oh. What's this time? The last bite here? That's enough? You want to try this juice?

When I finally get to Alberta, a lot has changed. Even in just a year and a half, 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? I think that's about it. She did pretty good. I think that's about it. Yeah. Like, I've never seen her wear a hoodie in my entire life. Someone get that lady a cheetah print and a leather cap.

My youngest sister, Regan, again. She doesn't want that. You need to get her a cashmere sweater because she doesn't wear hoodies. If she's cold, she gets a sweater. Probably cashmere sweater because she doesn't wear hoodies if she's cold she gets a sweater probably cashmere turtleneck yes scoop neck no do you have to think really hard to like remember before mom i mean a little but i still do remember but it's very vivid what she's like now but it's just not her. Do you think of them as different people?

I think of her as like she's like trapped in there and she's super pissed. No, I really do. I can see on her face like she's like she's not there, she's a vacant stare but I also think like if she's, like, she's not there. She's a vacant stare. But I also think, 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. This sounds terrible, but in my brain, Mom'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. I mean, I, yeah, kind of. But, like, this is, like, just, she's already killed. 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 eye roll 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 weaponize

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 is 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'd think that they could heat it. We're going to have turkey and sweet potatoes and turnip puff.

Do you like turnip puff? It sounds really good. 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. Do you want your hands in this blanket are they cold this can go right up over your chin yeah is that what you want

right up just a nice cozy warm all right there we go how's that don't know if that's anything you want there or not now you're like a burrito. It made you into a mom-rito. 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. She taught at 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 was like, well, I have 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 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. and just be like, hi, Gav. Just, it's just me.

So 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 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 were you are you sure and sometimes at the end of the phone call I'd be like, you know, I just thought I'd call. And I'm like, 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's like, oh, I don't know. Maybe I should probably call your dad. 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. 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.

This, again, is Kyle. I would say to Gavin, like, you gotta, this is something's, 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. It's funny that that's the thing that really drove it home, was the shopping. Anyone that's been 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 and be like, ah, just one more thing. She was so frustrating to shop with

because she would never buy anything. She would just, I'd 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 ever needed anything.

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 2060, 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 at such and such a 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 bag. 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's 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. When I came back, she was at the same table. I think she'd probably been circling for like the whole time I was gone. It was just impossible to me that she went elsewhere and came back. She's just was kind of like this table is where I'm staying. 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 two 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 bangs. 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... 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 Jan Arden, who's been very open about her mother's journey through Alzheimer's. Here's how she put it. 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 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. But 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.

Jen 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, I need to find that thread because she 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 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. Twitch Jan 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 Shitburger.

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. As my mom would say, let's not be kidding. Coming up next time on Let's Not Be Kidding. How long has it been for your mom? She's still alive, but she's... How long has it been? Since she started to descend. You said eight years?

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 bathroom with like an oompa loompa, like a circle, an orange circle of oompa loompa. Because she thought she was moisturizing and she'd be like, ready to go to the store? And you're like, no, you are not. Oh, that's sad.

I see a really good gay son would have put the moisturizer on his face and said, see mom, now we look the same. Then you go together. 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. 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 Connell is our digital coordinating producer. Original music by William Lamoureux. Our senior producer is Damon Fairless. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak.

Tanya Springer is the senior manager of CBC Podcasts. And Arif Noorani is the director. That was the first episode of Let's Not Be Kidding. You can listen to more episodes from the series right now on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.