It is with a heavy heart that I am addressing the friends of Swiftfur. On Thursday August 20th some time in the early morning hours he passed away in his sleep. His passing has caught his family completely off guard.

He was my oldest brother, he was 17 when I came into the world, and I looked up to him as a child. He was everything a little brother could have hoped for and he did his best to bring happiness into my life. I owe him that much to tell his friends in the furry community that he's no longer with us. He was a kind and gentle person who kept his online life very private. I'm spending the next few days to reach out and let his furry friends know that he is no longer with us. To go at 49 doesn't seem fair to me: I only had the opportunity to know one side of him for a third of my life. If I had known that the last time I would speak to him was some mundane b.s. conversation, I would have given him a huge hug and have told him how much he meant to me. Now it's something I have to spend the rest of my time thinking about. From the friends I've spoken to on discord and messenger he was an amazing person who will be missed, and from the real-life side of his life, as his youngest brother he truly was an all-around amazing person. It's so hard to string thoughts together while I'm writing this, because I'm still in shock and grief.

The last thing I can do is share a song in tribute to him. He was a Pink Floyd fan. He had posters and t shirts and one that caught my attention the most when I was a child was a poster of the album Wish You Were Here; featuring the man shaking hands with another man whose burning.

So here's a cover of the original. I chose a cover because, like my brother, the original I'm doing this in homage to him:

https://youtu.be/fBdOq6Xl-D0

Thank you all for reading this, and may you all have happy & fulfilling lives.
-Ryan