Rainbow Bridge

In wicca we have an afterlife belief in 'The Rainbow Bridge'. This is what animals and pets cross over to reach the afterlife. On New Year's Day 2013, my hamster died. She was two-and-a-half years old which is pretty good going for that little ball of fluff, admittedly, at her ripe age a lot of that fluff had dropped out, leaving her with random baldness.

She was buried late in the afternoon on the 1st Jan, beneath a flagstone next to the garden pond. The quite interesting thing happened the next night. Having fallen asleep I found myself on a road crossing a 'nothingness, a kind of suspended bridge suspended by nothing. Very odd. In my arms I was holding what I thought was a very small and ugly baby. It lay there with big round eyes and looking up at me. I knew within my mind this was what had been my hamster. But she now looked like a baby and I was being allowed to carry her across that Rainbow Bridge. I knew my hamster was about to enter a new reincarnationry cycle and I was being given the honour of seeing her through it. I began walking across the bridge and she looked up at me and smiled, making her face look even uglier. We then seemed to converse without words.
Thank you for my life with you. She put into my head.
But you slept throughout it in your cage, what kind of life was that? I replied.
But if I did not feel safe and loved, I would not have slept through it. I had a little to finish off and you helped me with it.

Then as we continued over the bridge she began to fade in my arms. Becoming slightly gaseous and fading from me. As I reached the midpoint of the bridgwe I had to stop. I could pass no further and at that point my arms were empty. My baby - as I did often refer to her in life, had gone, becoming as I thought at that time, a human.

I continued to believe that she had jumped the evolutionry cycle and was due to be born human, albeit a bloody ugly one. But it only just struck me when I saw a photo on Facebook this evening, she isn;t coming back as a human, she is coming back as an ape. The picture I saw looked just like she did, but she had a human-like smile which is what confused me. I feel so privilaged that I was able to share that passing over. I know my baby is going to have a wonderful new incarnation if there is still enough forests left for her when she does return.

This is the picture I saw this evening and the little ape is almost exactly how I saw her in my arms. Coincidentally the caption is very appropriate. Almost confirming, in a sense.