Rainbow Bridge Poem

The Rainbow Bridge Poem, the true story behind the world’s most influential piece of pet loss and mourning literature, is finally receiving the recognition it deserves. She may not have known it at the time, but Edna Clyne-Rekhy helped and comforted millions of pet owners from all walks of life all over the world when she wrote the Rainbow Bridge Poem.

The year would be 1959; Edna was just 19 at the time. Grieving the loss of her very first dog, Major the Labrador, she ripped some pages from her sister’s notebook and began to pencil “The Rainbow Bridge Poem”. Her final words, placed at the top of the page, said, “Rainbow Bridge”.

Some years later, Edna married and showed Her husband, The Rainbow Bridge Poem. Suggested she publish it, Edna was initially hesitant though eventually documented The Rainbow Bridge Poem and distributed it amongst some close friends. With humility and grace, Edna did not add her name to The Rainbow Bridge Poem. As more and more people shared the poem across the country and eventually the world, it became cut off from its source.

“Sometimes I would just sit and talk to him, and I felt that he could understand every word I said“, she told Paul Koudounaris, the American Author, Photographer and Art Historian who interviewed Edna Clyne-Rekhy at the age of 82 back in 2023. She went on to say to Paul “My mother used to ask how I had trained Major to be so gentle and obedient, and I still laugh about the question, explaining that I had never trained him at all, it was natural between us“. Paul started searching for the authentic and original Author of the Rainbow Bridge Poem in 1995.