Paul shot himself yesterday.
He's passed on.
Thank you for all you tried to do.
Something is coming, in Paul's memory.Be the first to know →
Handmade in New Smyrna Beach, Florida
Not Everything Is Sunshine And Rainbows.
But There's Always A Bridge.
This is Paul.
Paul was a welder his whole life. When his hands retired they wouldn't sit still, so he started building rainbow bridges for grieving pet owners. It began with his own three Chihuahuas. He could build a bridge in a day, and he made them for years, until every room in his house was full.
Handmade. Finite. One of a kind.
17Small
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Paul will never make another. When these are gone, there will never be more.
Hand-built, one of a kindA finite collectionEvery bridge supports the family
Read the Rainbow Bridge poem
Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here,your pet goes to Rainbow Bridge.
There are meadows and hills for all of our special friendsso they can run and play together.There is plenty of food, water, and sunshine,and friends are warm and comfortable.
All the animals who have been ill and old are restored to health and strength.Those who were hurt are made better and strong again,like we remember them before they go to heaven.
They are happy and content, except for one small thing:they each miss someone very special to them,who had to be left behind.
They all run and play together,but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance.His bright eyes are shining. His body shakes.Suddenly he begins to run from the herd, rushing over the grass,his legs carrying him faster and faster.
And when you and your special friend finally meet,you cuddle in a happy hug, never to be apart again.You and your pet are in tears.Your hands again cuddle his head, and you look again into his trusting eyes,so long gone from life, but never absent from your heart,and then you cross the Rainbow Bridge together.
Edna Clyne-Rekhy
1959 · written for her dog, Major
Paul Allabaugh built that bridge out of wood, by hand, so the people left behind would have somewhere to stand and remember.
It started with a wheelchair.
Paul's wife Pat posted that she needed one. Amber, Jason's wife, saw the post. Jason's mother had passed not long before, and her wheelchair was still in the garage, so they gave it to Pat, freely. One chair, from one mother who was gone, to another. The next day Paul carried two of his rainbow bridges to their door to say thank you. That was the beginning.
Paul Allabaugh
A native of Plymouth, PA. A lifelong welder. A craftsman who built bridges between grief and memory.
He could build a bridge in a day. What he couldn't do was sell them consistently.
Selling meant facing people, and Paul's social anxiety was so heavy his wife had to speak for him. People came to the house, looked at the bridges, and left without one, and over the months it wore him down. He sold a few, even six the day before he died. Never many. The making was effortless. The few feet between his workbench and a stranger's hands was a wall he couldn't climb.
Jason called Paul on March 8 and offered to build him a website for free, no catch. They talked for an hour. Paul was going to send the sizes and the pricing. His last words on that call were, “Sounds good. Okay, bye-bye.”
The pricing never came.
Twenty-two days after that phone call, Paul died by suicide in his workshop. Pat found him. The morning after, she sent Amber a text. We keep it here, just as she wrote it, because it's the truth of what this is.
A text message to Amber. The morning after.
If the weight is on you tonight, you don't have to carry it alone. Paul never made this call. Please make it.
988Call or text. Free, confidential, 24/7. A real person answers.
The family they left behind
Pat carried Paul's bridges after he was gone, trying to finish what he couldn't. About ten weeks later, on June 13, Pat passed too, at home. That left their son Aaron, who lost both of his parents in the space of two months.
Aaron lives with a traumatic brain injury from a motorcycle accident, and his mother was the center his days were built around. With her gone he can't safely be on his own, so his brother is taking him north to be near family. Their three cats had to be re-homed. A local pastor and his men's group were going to build a ramp so Pat could get out of her house safely; she died before they could start, and the ramp was never built.
Every bridge sold now stands with the family Paul and Pat left behind. That's the floor, not the ceiling.
There's a reason this cut Jason as deep as it did. When his mother was eleven, her own father died by suicide, and she was in the house. The silence of it followed her the rest of her life and reached all the way down to him. He knows the gap Paul couldn't cross from the inside, the kind of mind that builds something at two in the morning and can't make itself sell it by nine.
He built this site in the hardest year of his own life. What the enemy meant for evil, the Lord turns into beauty from ashes. The goal is one million people pulled back from the edge before this is finished. The bridges are how it starts.
Why this is bigger than Paul
The veterinarian who knew Paul.
Two houses down from where Paul lived, Dr. Ginger has his largest bridge standing at her clinic. She'll tell you her own profession loses more of its people to suicide than almost any other. The same gap. The same number, 988. The same mission.
Meet Dr. GingerReal wood. Real joinery. Real craftsman.
About forty of them remained when he died. Each one is one of a kind, and every sale goes straight to the family Paul and Pat left behind.
Three ways to be part of this.
Buy a bridge.
The bridges Paul built are still here. Real wood from a real craftsman, one of a kind, while they last. Every sale supports the family Paul and Pat left behind.
Support the mission.
Sent through Amber Laird's Venmo. Amber is the messenger. Your gift supports Paul and Pat's son and this mission, right here in our community. Via Venmo, not tax-deductible.
Get involved.
Are you a craftsman, an artist, a veterinarian, a pastor, a veteran, a coalition partner, a donor with a story? Tell us who you are and what piece of this you carry.