The Rainbow Bridge

As you know, I am a dog person. My puppy Milo is my baby... spoiled and rotten. Many of you may not know that before Milo there was Sir Charles Almonzo, my sheltie. He was my first baby and I was devastated when I lost him to liver cancer. His passing made me curious about the Rainbow Bridge. Now, I’m not sure I believe in such a thing, but it is comforting. This week Dr. Norette Underwood wrote the following column in our sister paper explaining the history of the Rainbow Bridge. I thought I would share it with you. Read it and tell me what you think.

Sandra Brand is the editor of the NEA Town Courier and The Osceola Times.

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I found this true story by Paul Koudounaris from Feb. 9, 2023. Since Thursday is Rainbow Bridge Remembrance Day. I thought this would be a nice story for Pet Talk.

Edna Clyne was 19 years old and living in Inverness, Scotland, in 1959, when her Labrador Retriever named Major died. He was her first dog. Not the family’s first, there had been others in the house, but the first that had been hers alone. “He was a very special dog,” she told me, “Sometimes I would just sit and talk to him, and I felt that he could understand every word I said.” Her mother used to ask how Edna had trained Major to be so gentle and obedient, and she still laughs about the question, explaining that she had never trained him at all, it was natural between them. Many of us who have had pets have known one like that, the one that truly understands, the one who lives as a piece of us.

We can also understand the pain of their passing. The day after Major died Edna felt a compulsion. There was something she needed to write, and while she hadn’t preconceived any of it, it was there, words longing to be heard. She remembers it being a warm and wonderful feeling, like Major himself was guiding her in what to write. There was a notebook nearby and she pulled a piece of paper from it and began. When Edna filled the page she turned it over—only to find there was already something written there. Oops, she had in her haste inadvertently pulled a page from her sister’s notebook. No matter. She erased her sister’s words as best she could, and then filled half the page with her own until she was done. Then she turned the paper back over and put a title on it, two words: “Rainbow Bridge.”

Yes, that Rainbow Bridge. It is probably impossible, at least in the English-speaking world, to have lost a cherished pet and have never heard of the Rainbow Bridge. The words composed by Edna at Major’s passing are nearly ubiquitous in the world of animal mourning. They are printed on sheets passed out to people when they pick up the ashes of cremated pets. Sympathy cards and posters are found with them. Snippets of the text are frequently used in epitaphs dedicated to beloved animals. Some pet cemeteries even have them inscribed for all visitors to see, on giant stone tablets that look like something handed by God to Moses. Her words are so well known that even though they are confined to grieving pet owners they comprise one of the most influential pieces of mourning literature ever written.

As a concept, what nineteen year old Edna envisioned is a kind of limbo where deceased pets are returned to their most hale form and cavort in newfound youth in an Elysian setting. But it is not paradise itself. Rather, it is a kind of way station where the spirit of an animal waits for the arrival of its earthly human companion, so that they may cross the Bridge together, to achieve true and eternal paradise in each other’s company, and to thereafter never again be parted. The Rainbow Bridge has been referred to as “chicken soup for the soul,” as a kind of simple comfort for grieving hearts. This is not an unfair assessment, but it is also something much more.

Those who have grown up in Western culture, and especially under a Christian dominated spiritual system, have frequently been discouraged from believing that animals have an afterlife, the standard line being that non-humans lack souls, and therefore cannot enter Heaven or participate in eternity. In truth, this is in no way a canonical belief, and anyone who claims it to be is ignoring centuries of debate on the issue of animals and souls among religious scholars. It is not a simple matter, it has been grossly oversimplified and presented in one-sided terms: animals have no souls, there is no eternity for them. Yet to people who have found their greatest joy in their pets, how can there be a paradise without them?

And that is precisely why the Rainbow Bridge has become so popular. It serves as a kind of theological plug in. As an elastic concept that can be applied to any faith, it provides a clearly expressed means for us to reunite with our pets in the afterlife. In so doing, it gives hope where a person may have been previously acculturated to believe there was none. Yet despite the overwhelming popularity of the Rainbow Bridge, its author has never received credit. It is usually listed as anonymous, and if one tries to get to the source, one must run the gantlet of a wide range of purported authors who have tried to claim it as their own.

When 19-year-old Edna finished the original draft, and went through and crossed out a few words to swap them for others, she showed it to her mother. “My darling girl, you are very special,” was the response, although her mother also pointed out that it was a bit messy, and asked if she didn’t want to write it out again. Edna didn’t write it out again, the copy with the words crossed out was fine, it was true to the moment. She showed it to some other people who were close to her and then put the paper away, not showing it to anyone else for a long time.

Pet owners who have lost a cherished pet are familiar with the Rainbow Bridge. Hopefully one day I will reach the Rainbow Bridge and all my treasured fur babies will be waiting on me.