If Only Rainbow Bridge Had Visiting Hours

If only Rainbow Bridge had visiting hours, what a comfort it would bring. Just a few precious moments to sit beside them once more, to bury our faces in their fur, to feel the rhythm of their breathing and the familiar warmth of their silent presence. To say all the things we didn’t get to say. Or maybe to sit quietly, in the peace that needs no words—because love, real love, always speaks louder in silence.

But as that’s not the case, we hold on in the only way we can: through memory, through stories whispered into pillows at night, through old photos that make us smile and ache all at once. We carry them in the way we still pause at the door expecting to see them. In the way we instinctively reach for the leash, or glance toward their favorite spot on the couch. In the way we still talk to them, hoping—just maybe—they’re listening from wherever they are.

It’s a kind of love that never leaves, even when they do. A bond that’s invisible, but unbreakable. One that lives in the spaces between heartbeats and the quiet moments of everyday life. We feel them when sunlight warms the floor where they used to nap, when the wind rustles the trees just the way it did on your last walk together, when a song plays that feels like a memory.

We never truly stop grieving them—because we never truly stop loving them. Grief is simply love with nowhere to go. And though we can’t visit them physically, we return to them every day in thought and spirit. They may be gone from our sight, but never from our soul.

So we wait. We hope. We believe.

That one day, at the end of our own long walk, we’ll see them again—tails wagging, eyes sparkling, hearts open wide. And when that moment comes, no words will be needed. Just a reunion of two souls who were never really apart.

Until then, we carry them with us.

Always.