I was editing after she'd gone through the treatment It's when you're editing that you really sit with [the material], and I'd already been sitting in this place of illness. I felt really stuck in it in this tape, thinking things like, "Oh, it could've gone this way for my family. At some point I'm going to have to face the mortality of my parents." That made me much more able to recognize the universality and understand the more subtle actions that were going on in the tapes -- the role reversal, how you start to take care of your older family members.

Of your work together, Adrian said, "She cared about every word when I couldn't care, or carry it anymore." What was working on this project like for you as an editor, given the nature of its subject matter and that you were immersed in it for two years?
There was such a gray area between the personal and the professional in the way Adrian and I related. I was working from home, so we'd be working there together on this difficult emotional material. I was having my own emotional response to the material by remaining in this space for so long, so it was often a question of "When do I get to leave this space?"

Were there any points when you were feeling like this project maybe couldn't or shouldn't happen?
One of the things that I did constantly during the process was to say to her, "If you don't want to do this, let's stop. You don't have to do it." At certain points, I was concerned this wasn't doing good, asking myself, "Is this turning into her reliving this loss and going back to these really dark days?" When she was struggling, I felt like, "Oh my -- can this possibly be good? This doesn't appear to be good."

Adrian mentioned the different masters you had to serve while working with her on this -- not just hers and those of this material, but your own deadlines and requirements on the StoryCorps end. How did you balance between those various obligations, both personal and professional, relating to this project?
There were times that Adrian was resistant, but I knew that she wanted to keep going and if we were going to keep going, then I needed to stay with the work. Each time she walked away from it, I was still sitting with it. I still had it hanging over me, with deadlines I had to fulfill. On an emotional level, I didn't want to keep playing with this tape if we were calling it a day. The project was something that we as a company had anticipated taking much less time. I don't think anyone really understood all the emotional implications of working on it. Its timeline was extended from almost the moment it started. I had one of my colleagues covering a lot of my responsibilities at the office, but a lot of it stayed with me. I was still spending half my weeks at StoryCorps and half working at home with Adrian. It was tough to be coming in and needing to abide by the office culture, needing to stay up on what's going on, all while being immersed in the project. That said, I'm really thankful for having had the chance to work with Adrian, and really proud of what we did.

There was a large volume of material going into this -- 40 hours of audio and 70 pages of writing -- yet the piece sounds and reads almost as a tone poem. What was your approach in distilling so much material down to such a spare finished product?
While the audio didn't distill down immediately to eight minutes, it did distill down significantly pretty easily. There were some scenes that just slammed you. Once we figured out what our story was, a lot could become peripheral. There was no reason to take you as listener into explaining who all the other people were in the room; plus, there was a lot with her mom and of them (LeBlanc's parents) rehashing their relationship in their last months together I started originally with eight to 10 hours of stuff -- some of the meat, that I went into to try and edit something listenable. Somewhere in the process, I played it to Adrian, just rough cuts of little gems I had found. There were certain parts that Adrian was really wed to, but the truth was, some wouldn't translate to the listener. There was a lot of picking and choosing -- digital editing is really made for someone who's entirely compulsive. You can keep going and going: It's addictive. But things began coming to the surface.

The writing took a really different course. I had told Adrian to write what she recalled, and I gave her these really broad, really general questions, figuring I'd get material to have to slot into the course of this piece. But Adrian had so many emotions. A lot of what she was writing was crucial to her experience at that time, but not necessarily related to what this piece was about. Then we pulled it in more: your dad's physical body; a description of the house. Then I began to put it into the scripts, sometimes having what I needed; other times needing filler from Adrian in certain parts. A lot of that writing was beautiful, but sort of too literary for radio. There was a lot of having to let that go.

I felt incredibly stuck with the project this summer, thinking, maybe this was as far as I was capable in going with it. Then, Adrian left to go away for a while -- in part, I think she needed to get away from it, though not consciously. But, then things started to click in my head -- this goes here, that goes there, to become a really rough script. When we picked up to start working on it together, it really fell into place. I'd ask her: Do you mean this or that? Do you want to use this word or that word? Then, I could run these scripts by my boss Dave [Isay]. He'd make this face when it didn't really work, and he'd keep me on course when I got off course, since Adrian and I were so deep in it. Often, I was just thinking, "This is really hard material -- this is a really uncomfortable place to be." We both struggled with this, but the more parameters I was able to give or that we created together, the cleaner and smoother the piece became.

I do agree with Adrian about the difference between European attitudes toward death and dying; versus Americans not wanting to notice it. I think this piece has been really important for that exact reason. You go through the first days of a parent dying of cancer, and illness wracks their body -- you can see it killing them. You don't reveal these moments to people. You may say things about it to your partner but past that, you're not returning to it. There's real value to this project because, eventually, every person is going to go through this. You'll watch it happen to someone else, and then it'll be your turn. Buddhist philosophy would tell you you're preparing for death from the moment you're born. However, we walk around with this huge fear of getting older -- even changing how we look to have baby skin at 50. I think that if we can take the inevitable and make the inevitable more acceptable, it'll be good, because it'll be happening whether we embrace it or not.

Anything you'd like to add?
I think it was really brave of Adrian to share this story and really brave of her father to be part of it. I give a big thanks to both of them for that. I feel honored to have worked on this project. It's amazing to feel you know somebody when you're never going to get the chance to meet them.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This interview contains excerpts, and has been edited for clarity.]

Rebecca L. Fox is mediabistro.com's features editor.