Rainbow Bridge where pets go and wait

“You’ll appreciate this,” the email said. I get lots of emails (there’s nothing more disappointing than when you click on and there’s nothing there for you). I double clicked the message.

Man alive, I couldn’t even get halfway though the first paragraph without welling up, doing that quick inhale like a tiny sob and looking round to see nobody was there to see or hear me, even though I knew I was on my own. By the end of the second paragraph, oh forget it. I was sobbing like a teenage girl who’s just been dumped by her boyfriend.

I don’t know if I’m the last person on the planet to discover this, but if you’ve ever had a pet, read this.

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

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals that had been ill and old are restored to health and vigour; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by.

The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind. They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....

(Anon.)

Sorry if you’re reading this on the train or somewhere public. Phew, I know I’ve had a lot of pets, and maybe you could argue that quantity should make me somewhat harder, more resilient, but imagining all my animal friends playing happily together in a big field waiting for me, and I’m in bits on the floor. Until I was twenty-two, I’d only had one cat. Now, they’d have to put reinforced girders under the Bridge to cope with the weight of all the pigs, horses, dogs and cats – gosh there have been a lot.

I’m not normally a cryie type of person. I watched Titanic with dry eyes, saw Ghost, ET and the last episode of Friends without even blinking back a tear. But I couldn’t watch Babe—Oh, do you remember those old Lassie films? Lassie Come Home, I think it was, when the dog would wait by the gate every day while the little boy went to school, and then the boy grew up and joined the army, and Lassie went with him. I watched them as a kid, but there’s no way I could watch them now.

I even refuse to watch Chicken Run.

Mass slaughter, sadness and annihilation of humans in films are fine, as long as they don’t harm the puppy!

I think the more you spend your life with animals, the closer you get to them – with the possible exception of sheep. This is just a guess, but I doubt anyone ever reached Rainbow Bridge and mistook it for New Zealand.