Photo: John Towner
Karen Kilgariff, a writer and comedian most recently known for co-hosting the podcast My Favorite Murder, lost her mom to Alzheimers in 2016 after a 12-year battle. She shares about her experience in a podcast conversation with her friend Chris Garcia. You can listen to the full episode below.
Later in the episode, she shares about how she and her sister navigated their mom’s disease and some of the sisterly dark humor that emerged amid the tragic circumstances. The clip starts around the 17:00 and goes until 19:15. It’s also transcribed below.
Karen: [My sister and I] talk to each other pretty much every day, and she's my best friend. But during my mom being sick there was just so much tension and there's so much anxiety and — there was so much to manage at one time, and as we lost my mom more and more we would tell each other.
Like the first time I had the experience where I was trying to put mom to bed and she fought me and I yelled at her and then I scared her and she kind of went like, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," and apologized to me, and then I couldn't stop crying because it was so awful.
[Laughs] This is like gallows humor, like crazy. But one night my sister came to get me and that had happened and it was really bad and I had to tell my sister because I felt like I'd done that so badly and that was like I yelled at our sick mom - what's wrong with me? [Laughs]
And my sister goes, "Are you fucking kidding me? I do it every time."
And I was like, "Wait, what?!"
She goes, "She drives you crazy! Of course you yell at her." And I was like, l felt like I was like borderline elder abuse, how mad I got.
And she goes, "Yeah, she makes you that mad. That what we're all doing all the time."
Then I said, in the middle of really bad sobbing, I just go, "I just want her to die.” I said it so dramatically of like, can you believe I'm even saying this?
And my sister goes ,"Oh please, you don't think I think about spiking her shit with Abilify every time I go over there?"
[…] In the middle of crying she said that and then we both were laughing so hard, where it's like…this is a nightmare. [Laughs]
The full transcript of the podcast episode can be found here.