Rainbow Bridge Poem

"Rainbow Bridge" is a short prose poem about a green meadow just this side of heaven, where pets who have died wait, healthy and happy, until the person they love arrives and they cross the bridge together. For decades nobody knew who wrote it, but in 2023 it was traced to a Scottish woman, Edna Clyne-Rekhy, who wrote it in 1959 at the age of 19, the day after her dog Major died.

If you're here because you've just lost an animal you loved, we're so sorry. There's a particular silence in a house after a pet dies: the empty bed, the bowl you keep almost filling. We know that ache, and so did the teenager who wrote these words.

So let's take this gently. Here's the true story of the poem, why it comforts so many of us, and a few small things that can help in the days ahead.

Who wrote the Rainbow Bridge poem?

Edna Clyne was 19 and living in Inverness, Scotland, in 1959 when Major, her Labrador Retriever, died. He was her first dog of her own, and he died in her arms. The next day she was still crying when her mother suggested she write down how she felt.

So she did. Sitting in the family's lounge, she wrote the first line on a sheet of white paper, and the rest poured out, filling the front and back. "It was like I was talking to my dog," she later told National Geographic. "I was talking to Major."

She never published it. She kept it private for years, then typed out a few copies by hand for close friends. None of them carried her name. Those friends shared it, their friends shared it, and slowly the words drifted away from the person who wrote them.

The art historian Paul Koudounaris spent about a decade tracing the poem while researching pet cemeteries. In January 2023 he reached Edna Clyne-Rekhy, by then 82, and she showed him her original handwritten draft. He published the story in February 2023, and National Geographic confirmed it the same month.

What about Paul C. Dahm and the other claimants?

For years, many websites (including this one) credited the poem to Paul C. Dahm, an Oregon grief counsellor, often with the date 1981. Others named William N. Britton or the pet-loss counsellor Wallace Sife. Here's what's actually known.

• The poem went viral in 1994. On 20 February 1994 the Dear Abby advice column, read by around 100 million people, printed the poem in full with no author and asked readers to help identify one. No one could.
• Claims followed the fame. Koudounaris found fifteen separate filings under the title "Rainbow Bridge" with the US Copyright Office within five years of that column. None of the claimants' booklets appeared before Dear Abby ran the text.
• William N. Britton published The Legend of the Rainbow Bridge in 1994, saying the story came from a Native American shaman.
• Paul Dahm published a book called The Rainbow Bridge in 1997. A claimed 1994 copyright for the text doesn't appear among registered copyrights, and the 1981 date has no documented source.
• Wallace Sife has said he believed the text grew out of a poem of his own from the 1980s.

Edna Clyne-Rekhy's handwritten 1959 original predates all of them by decades. That's why we now credit her, and why we've corrected this page.

One more source of confusion: there's also a separate rhyming poem called "Rainbow Bridge," written later by a different couple. It's a different work. This page is about the original prose piece.

What the poem says

The poem is written in plain, gentle prose, almost like a bedtime story. It opens with its most famous line:

Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

From there it describes the meadow: hills to run on, plenty of food and water and sunshine. Animals who were old or ill are well again, and the ones who were hurt are whole. They're happy, except for one thing. Each of them misses someone who had to be left behind.

Then one day, one of them stops, looks into the distance and starts to run. You've been spotted. The reunion is joyful and wordless, and the poem ends with you and your pet stepping onto the bridge side by side:

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together...

Edna Clyne-Rekhy, "Rainbow Bridge" (1959). The lines above come from the version that circulated anonymously for decades. You can read her original text, as written in 1959, in National Geographic's report.

Why it comforts so many of us

Part of its power is that it was never written for an audience. It's a grieving 19-year-old talking to her dog. That honesty comes through, even after decades of retyping.

It also answers a private worry many people carry. Koudounaris points out that people raised in Christian traditions were often told animals don't have souls and won't be in heaven. "Rainbow Bridge" offers a place for them, and a promise that the bond doesn't simply end.

And look at how the poem is built. It doesn't dwell on the death at all. It skips straight to the healing, then to the waiting, then to the run across the grass. It lets us picture our animal well again, which is often the image we most need after watching them be ill or old. The ending trails off with an ellipsis, leaving what comes next to each of us.

Even the way the words changed over the years tells a story. Koudounaris noticed small differences between versions, animals "made whole" in one, "restored to vigor" in another. Each one is a sign of a grieving person retyping the words for someone else who needed them.

The idea behind the bridge

The poem gave us a phrase. "Crossed the Rainbow Bridge" is now one of the most common ways people say a pet has died, on vet clinic cards, in memorial posts, in the hush of a waiting room.

The image echoes much older ideas. Norse mythology has Bifröst, a burning rainbow bridge linking the world of humans to the home of the gods. And Margaret Marshall Saunders imagined a green paradise where animals wait for their people in Beautiful Joe's Paradise, her sequel to Beautiful Joe. But the Rainbow Bridge as we know it, the meadow, the waiting and the reunion, began with Edna and Major.

Small things that can help when you're grieving a pet

Grief for an animal is real grief. You don't need anyone's permission to feel it fully. If it helps, here are a few gentle places to start.

• Write to them. It's exactly what Edna's mother suggested. Ten minutes, a sheet of paper, everything you wish you could say. You don't have to show anyone.
• Make one small memorial. A photo in a frame, their collar in a box, a plant in the garden. Something you can touch on the hard days.
• Tell someone who knew them. Share a favourite story with a friend or family member who loved them too.
• Ask your vet about support. Many clinics can point you to local pet-loss groups or counsellors. If your grief stays raw for a long time, talking to a professional is a strong, sensible step.
• Give yourself time with the next chapter. There's no right moment to welcome another animal. When you're ready, it won't replace the one you lost. It will be its own kind of love.

Where to read the original

"Rainbow Bridge" is still in copyright, so we've quoted only its first and last lines here. Read Edna Clyne-Rekhy's original 1959 text and her story in National Geographic, and Paul Koudounaris's full account of how he found her on The Order of the Good Death. If you share the poem, please share her name with it.

The love you had for your animal doesn't go anywhere. Be gentle with yourself today. We're thinking of you.