Writing & Media
Listen
Bob recently joined The PA Playbook podcast for “A Good Death: Lessons From a Palliative Care Chaplain” — a conversation about what two decades at the bedside, in hospice, ICUs, and pediatric oncology, have taught him about dying well, and what a good death asks of us and of the people we love.
Essays
- Ministry of Caring PresenceWhat Showing Up Actually Means, From the Bedside to the Boardroom to the Machine Robert Drake, MDiv, MS | Clinical Chaplain & Death Doula | Drake Living & Dying Design… Read more: Ministry of Caring Presence
- We Were Told to Forgive. Nobody Taught Us How.“I have a question I’ve been asking clinical audiences for years, and the response never changes. Show of hands: how many of you were taught how to forgive? Almost no hands.”
- Not Father MulcahyWhat a Chaplain Actually Is, and Why You Might Want One by Robert Drake If you grew up watching MAS*H, you have a chaplain in your head already. Father Mulcahy… Read more: Not Father Mulcahy
- The Continuous Presence of AbsenceOn Dementia, Witness, and the Grief No One Names by Robert Drake There is a particular kind of grief that has no funeral. No casseroles arrive. No one sends flowers.… Read more: The Continuous Presence of Absence
- Death and the Loss of a WitnessA Companion Reflection to There Is No Fixing It by Robert Drake In a recent essay I wrote about the impossibility of fixing grief, and about presence as the only… Read more: Death and the Loss of a Witness
- There Is No Fixing It: On Presence, Loss, and the Courage to Stayby Robert Drake I have sat with the dying for many years. In pediatric oncology units, in ICUs, in hospice rooms, at bedsides where medical aid in dying was chosen… Read more: There Is No Fixing It: On Presence, Loss, and the Courage to Stay
- Compassion as the Ground: What the Anthropic-Pentagon Standoff Teaches Us About AI, Power, and What We Owe Each OtherIn my years as a clinical chaplain, I have heard it many times. A teenage child at a bedside. A sibling gripping the rail. A partner pressed against the wall… Read more: Compassion as the Ground: What the Anthropic-Pentagon Standoff Teaches Us About AI, Power, and What We Owe Each Other