Gavin Crawford and Let's Not Be Kidding

9 May 2023 -

“Imagine watching TV and every single time someone comes on screen you think they’re a new character,” said Gavin Crawford, explaining his mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. “It unfolded slowly. One day it occurred to me that she was wearing two different earrings.”

We met at the Second Cup for a coffee one morning. He was eager to talk about his new project, a seven-part podcast called Let’s Not Be Kidding. Over the course of the decade, Gavin, who hosts Because News on CBC Radio, flew back to Alberta dozens of times to visit with his mother, and it wasn’t always easy. “My mother would talk to me like I was some old friend, and she’d tell me about her kids, which is me, and she’d say things like, 'My son Gavin lives in Toronto with — get this — a guy.'” 

Gavin struggled with how, as an artist and comedian, to deal with the situation. “I needed to put this somewhere. Stand-up was not the right venue. Is it a book? I’m too lazy to type. Then my friend who does podcasts came along. I told him about the time my mother thought my partner Kyle [Tingley] invented the Christmas tree. And he said, this is a podcast. So, I reached out to other people who I know had gone through the same thing, like Scott Thompson and Jann Arden and Aurora Browne. It became a little like Comedians in Cars Talking About Alzheimer’s,” joked Gavin. 

“By the time we started taping, we had to move my mother into a care home, and then the pandemic hit, so for two years we couldn’t visit her and she sort of disappeared. She couldn’t use the phone, and even if I went out there, I had to visit through a window.”

Gavin’s mother passed last September. Gavin’s father is still doing well, and last winter he, Gavin, Kyle and Kyle’s father all went on a boat cruise together. Then Gavin and I talked about the possibility of dementia in our futures, and how to handle assisted suicide. None of these things are easy to consider. “God, I can’t even deal with the cats,” remarked Gavin. 

We got back on track with a few amusing anecdotes. “I saw a list of my mother’s phone numbers,” he told me, “and it was like hieroglyphics — a 2, a backwards 3, a square. Then once, at the facility, she grabbed my arm and said, ‘This man will not let me leave.’ And this is where my improv skills came into play. So I said, ‘I saw on the news that the bridge is washed out so no one is going anywhere until the weather clears.’ And that would be enough of a distraction until she fell asleep. She stayed funny for quite a long time, but there is a point where it all goes really fast. 

“I missed the woman I grew up knowing,” said Gavin. The comment was quite poignant for me. I felt exactly the same way when my own mother started drifting away. So how on earth could I afford not to listen to this podcast? Or, for that matter, anyone with parents?