At a small kitchen table in their rental condo in Pensacola, Florida, Dick and Kathy McCaskill quietly color an elaborate star in an adult coloring book. Kathy, 77, laughs as she picks up a dark blue pencil. “I love doing it,” she says. Her husband, Dick, 76, smiles: “I married a blue girl.” The quiet ritual soothes Kathy and helps with the anxiety and cognitive struggles that come with her dementia.
Their grandson Colby, 21 and finishing his senior year at Fordham University in New York, is visiting. He joins them with a gold pencil and asks how long they’ve been working on the book. The easy conversation — the kind they once had when Colby was a boy and his grandparents told stories of long bike rides and daring ski runs — feels different now. Time has changed their roles: the grandparents who were once adventuresome are navigating cancer and dementia, and Colby is learning how to sit with that change.
To process his feelings, Colby recorded what he calls an audio letter to his grandfather. “Dear Papa,” he begins, admitting how hard it is to watch them grow old. The piece became a podcast episode that won the grand prize in this year’s NPR College Podcast Challenge. Judges singled it out for its intimacy and honesty: a grandson using sound and conversation to hold up a family’s shifting life.
The episode weaves scenes from family visits with interviews and Colby’s reflections. It does not avoid the facts: Kathy often forgets names, her age and simple tasks. In one moment she tells Colby, “I think right now I am like … 47 years old,” then laughs. In another she says, “Now, I started to say something, and then I can’t remember,” and admits it can be scary when she forgets what she intended to do.
Hearing the podcast has been emotional for Dick. “I’ve listened four or five times, and it brings tears every time,” he says, wiping his eyes. The three of them sit on the screened-in porch overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway, holding hands after listening together. Through the recording, Colby names the condition his family had been circling around: dementia. The word hits them with the force of clarity. “Hearing the word,” Dick says, “it’s sort of like a cold cup of water thrown in your face. You realize, well, it’s a fact. That’s what we’re dealing with.”
Daily frustrations come up in the small details: Kathy can learn to use an electric toothbrush but forget how to turn it off, or she might turn the faucet on and leave it running. Dick jokes that his daily prayer is, “Lord, give me more patience,” and he says the experience has deepened their faith and brought acceptance. Kathy often repeats the phrase, “The Lord knows it all,” which seems to steady her.
Colby says he used the podcast because he was too afraid to bring up these topics face-to-face. He feared that talking would only make everyone sad if there was no medical solution. Dick admits he avoided the subject too, not wanting to burden his grandson. Recording the conversation changed that. By naming dementia and speaking honestly, the family found a way to begin the hard conversations about aging, change and death.
The result has not been isolation but connection. As Colby expected, the podcast gave him a chance to tell his grandparents how he feels and to hear them tell him how they feel. Dick tells his grandson that, despite the changes, things have grown “better and sweeter” in some ways. Kathy notes how Dick patiently helps her find her words.
The family’s love remains, simply altered by time and circumstance. The podcast became more than a personal project: it became a bridge, helping three generations talk about what they are living through and making the future feel a little less frightening.