Maggie, our Golden Retriever, was a birthday gift to my husband from me during our first year of marriage. Since he has an April birthday and Easter was late that year, Maggie was presented to him in an Easter basket. She was going to be a dark red color so we gave her an Irish name, Maggie, after my mother who came from County Kerry (my mother passed away 10 years before I married my husband).

Maggie was a big, beautiful dog with all of the characteristics that Goldens are famous for. Since our children were young adults living on their own when we married, Maggie became our 'baby'. Although I had never owned a dog before, Maggie quickly captured my heart and very quickly taught me the beauty of unconditional love.

In the 11 ½ years we had her, we nursed her through tick fever, ear surgery and two knee surgeries. Each and every time she bounced back. We saw the gray in her face, her slower steps and the beginning of cataracts but we were not prepared for the sudden onset of megasophagus and aspiration pneumonia which forced us to make the painful decision to let her leave this world.

We let Maggie go late on a Friday afternoon and were numb with grief. We wondered aloud if Maggie would meet her namesake on the other side.

Between bouts of tears we sought comfort where we could and we went through the motions of our routine weekend chores. One of those chores was doing the laundry. Our utility company has cheaper rates on the weekend, so it has become a habit of mine to do laundry on Saturday or Sunday afternoons since we had moved back into our newly renovated house three years before. As part of our renovations, we installed a front loading washer and dryer and we put in a skylight in the laundry room for natural light.

For comfort on that particular Sunday afternoon, I had been reading a book by Allison DuBois entitled "We Are Their Heaven". Allison is a famous psychic and this particular book discussed the signs that our loved ones sometimes sent us after they had passed. My husband was on the computer in our home office.

Between chapters of the book I was doing loads of laundry. I was transferring a load of t-shirts from the washer to the dryer when I noticed what appeared to be streak across one of the t-shirts. I moved the t-shirt to examine it and the same streak appeared on the shirt below. After moving two more t-shirts, it dawned on me that what I was seeing was a rainbow splayed across the shirts. I looked up at the skylight to see if there were any water droplets acting as a prism (Since this was a sunny July afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona my chances of seeing any water droplets was nil). I was puzzled and wondered if it was some sort of sign but I said nothing at the time.

Over dinner that evening, my husband shared with me that he had been on line and discovered some of the Rainbow Bridge websites. He told me how moved he had been by the poem and how the poem and various stories he read reduced him to tears. I had never heard of the Rainbow Bridge before and chills went down my spine as I realized Maggie's final message to us.