The Rainbow Bridge, Humanity, And Why Stories Matter

"After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world." ~Philip Pullman

Mom called the day she moved into the senior’s home.

I’d been worried about her. Leaving the house she raised us in, leaving a lifetime of memories behind but she was stubborn, wanted to do it herself. So I waited with a pit in my stomach and when the phone rang, I grabbed it.

She didn’t even say hello, she was crying so hard.

I left her behind, she sobbed.

What? Mama, what happened? I asked but she kept crying. Mama, talk to me, I said, who did you leave behind, what happened? but she kept crying and my hands were shaking as I kept asking what happened, mama, what happened?

Finally she got one word out through her tears. Tabitha.

Oh mama, I said and that one word did me in.

I was still a kid when I’d showed up at mama’s door with a kitten. God, I’d left home so young. Finished high school and packed my bags the month after.

No, she said. I don’t want a kitten.

No Mom, listen, I said.

No, she said. Not listening. I don’t want a kitten, take it away.

Mom, I said, Sheila found her in a dumpster.

She stopped, shocked silent.

Sheila was taking out the garbage and a box mewed from in the trash bin, so she took her home but her mom said no. Betty’s boyfriend is allergic and Sharon can’t take her because her lease says no pets. Mine says no pets, too, but I’ll move. Please, mama, I pleaded. Just keep her for me until I can find a new place to move. Mama sighed.

I’m not asking you to keep her, mama, I said. Just until I can move.

The next morning I woke to the phone ringing, picked it up all sleepy. She didn’t even say good morning first. Can I keep her? That’s what she said.

What? I asked. And then mama started rambling about the kitten sleeping on her and purring and giving her kisses and making buns and I sat up, wide awake now.

You want my kitten? I asked, laughing.

I named her Tabitha, she said.

She bought a tiny harness and all around the block people wandered out to pat the kitty and chat with mama a few minutes. Their new evening ritual. She wasn’t even tired after work anymore, she came home eager to go walking with her kitty.

For years they were inseparable until the day Tabitha curled up for a nap and never woke, slipping out of mama’s life as peacefully and gently as she’d slipped into it.

Heartbroken, mama wrapped her in her favorite blanket, gently laid her in a tiny little pine box and buried her deep beneath the peonies in the flowerbed by the step.

Oh mama, I said. You didn’t leave her behind. She’s at the rainbow bridge waiting for you. There was dead silence on the phone for a minute.

What the hell are you talking about? she said.

So I told her the story.

---

Just this side of heaven, there’s a place called the Rainbow Bridge, I said. It’s all grassy hills and meadows and it’s forever spring. It’s where beloved pets go when they have to leave before us. Old pets become young again and those who were sick or injured become whole again. They romp and play in the sun while they wait for their humans.

And one day, a pet stops. Perks up their little ears. And they run. Because they know the sound of their human coming home. And they cross the bridge together.

That’s beautiful, mama whispered.

I told her it was written by a young girl in Scotland whose dog died at home just like Tabitha. Her name was Edna Clyne and she was crying into his fur when the story came to her. So she grabbed a notebook and quickly wrote it down.

Every time someone she knew lost their pet, she’d sit at her mother’s typewriter and type the story for them. And the people she gave it to passed it along and eventually her story made its way around the world.

In 1994, it appeared in a Dear Abbey column all the way across the world in America. Dear Readers, if anyone knows who wrote this, please write and tell me, she wrote in the column. It made me cry, she added in a postscript. But no one knew.

When Edna Clyne was eighty two years old, National Geographic contacted her. Did you write the Rainbow Bridge? they asked. Yes, she said. She’d written it when she was a teenager, and didn’t know it had made its way around the world.

It was harder to leave Tabitha than to leave the house, mama said.

Oh, mama, I said. You didn’t leave her behind. She’s not in that box in the ground, mama, she’s waiting for you at the rainbow bridge and you’ll see her again.

You’re a good kid, mama said.

---

When mama died, my sister and I were sitting in my living room holding cups of hot coffee generously laced with Baileys.

She said she believes people come from the stars and one day they disappear back there and I think that’s beautiful in a Little Prince sort of way.

So we pulled on our parkas and went outside and stood gazing into the night sky and when she looked at me, tears were frozen on her eyelashes and it made me cry at how impossibly beautiful and vulnerable and tender the whole world is.

What are you thinking? she asked.

I don’t know, I said.

I don’t know where we go when we die, I said.

I wish I was certain but I’m not. I don’t know if there’s a heaven or if we live again or go up and become part of the stars again but wherever mama is, I hope she stopped by the rainbow bridge. I hope mama and Tabitha are together again somewhere out there. Head tipped up to the stars, my sister smiled.

Same, she said. Same.

I lost dad on a beautiful day in the middle of June.

Chasing an ambulance praying and when I got to the hospital and the doctor said he didn’t make it, I sunk to the floor and wept, right there on that hospital floor.

And on the anniversary of dad’s death I was at a vet clinic with my face buried in fur just like the girl who wrote the Rainbow Bridge.

His name was Oliver. Because he was so skinny and hungry when he showed up begging at my door there was no such thing as too much food. Please, may I have some more? And he healed my broken heart and broke it again when he left.

I looked at the vet through tears and said today is the day I lost my dad and I don’t know how to lose them both on the same day.

And he wept. A complete stranger. Wept.

I still don’t know how the universe works or where we go when we die but I do believe stories are the glue that holds humanity together, however tenuously.

"After nourishment, shelter, and companionship,
stories are the thing we need most in the world."
—Philip Pullman