The Rainbow Bridge Keeper

The story

The meadow is on the far side of a green rise, and the keeper stands at the gate to meet every arrival personally. It is warm, there is no illness in it, and the grass is long. He is described as unhurried, and as having a particular gift for the ones who arrive confused.

Where it actually comes from

The Rainbow Bridge is a modern tradition rather than an ancient one, and its recent origin is part of its appeal — it was written for exactly this purpose. The prose poem circulated in pet-loss support networks from the 1980s onward, initially anonymously; research by the Oxford English Dictionary in 2023 identified Edna Clyne-Rekhy, a Scottish artist, as having written it in 1959 at the age of nineteen after the death of her dog Major. The image draws on older bridge-to-the-afterlife motifs found in Norse and other traditions, but the text itself is recent, and it has become one of the most widely shared pieces of consolation writing in the English language.

What it does for a child

A pet is very often a child’s first bereavement, and how it is handled tends to set the pattern for later ones. Guidance from child bereavement services is consistent on a few points: use the real words — died, not “put to sleep” or “gone away”, which frighten children about sleeping and about people leaving — allow the grief rather than rushing to replace the animal, and keep talking about them afterwards. A letter helps because it gives the child something to hold and re-read, and because it says explicitly that being sad is correct, which children often need permission for.

The Keeper of the Bridge of Colors

A story to read aloud · about 4 minutes

This is a quiet story, for a quiet week.

Long, long ago, people in the far north looked up after a storm and saw a rainbow stretching across the sky. They said it was a bridge, a bridge made of colors, reaching all the way from the earth up to the sky. Since that time, many people in many places have looked at rainbows and wondered where they lead.

This is the story of the one who takes care of that bridge. She is called the Rainbow Keeper.

The Rainbow Keeper is very gentle. Her hands are warm, and her voice is as soft as rain on a window. Every day she walks the bridge from end to end with a little brush, painting the colors fresh: red and orange, yellow and green, blue and a deep, quiet violet.

But the bridge is not made only of colors. It is made of something else, too. It is made of love.

Every time someone remembers a pet they have loved, a little bit of that love floats up into the sky and settles on the bridge. When you remember the way your dog wagged its whole body when you came home, a stripe of orange gets a little brighter. When you remember how your cat curled up warm on your lap, the yellow begins to glow. When you remember a soft ear, a funny sound, a happy splash in a puddle, the whole bridge shines a little more.

The Rainbow Keeper gathers up all that love. She knows every animal that has ever been loved by a child. She knows their names. She knows their favorite games and their favorite spots in the sun. She says them over to herself as she paints, so that not one of them is ever forgotten.

Sometimes, when a pet we love has to leave us and cannot come back, we feel a big, heavy sadness. We might cry. We might feel angry, or tired, or just very quiet. The Rainbow Keeper says all of those feelings are all right. She says sadness is simply what love feels like when it misses someone.

And she says one more thing. Love does not stop. It does not run out. The love you gave your pet was real, and it was a gift, and it made their whole life warm. And the love they gave you is still here, inside you. It is in the way you are gentle with animals. It is in the way you know how to care for something small. Nothing can take that away.

So on a day after the rain, if the sun comes out and you see a rainbow, you might like to stop and look for a little while. You might like to say your pet’s name out loud, or think of a happy time you had together. Some people like to imagine the Rainbow Keeper hearing the name, smiling, and painting that color just a little bit brighter.

Nobody knows everything about where rainbows lead. But we do know this: every rainbow is made of light, and light is a gentle thing.

And love, like light, keeps on shining.

An original Keepers story, grounded in recorded folk custom.

Pictures for a hard week

Some children find it easier to look than to talk. These are here to sit with together.

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