Goodbye Jack

On Father’s Day, I lost my brother, John “Jack” Oliver Rutherford. I, like most people, simply called him Jack Jr.. I had lost people in my family before, but this by far hit me the hardest. His passing away was a shock, but not a shock. You see, my little brother lived his life on the edge. When you live on the edge, there is always the inevitable falling down on the wrongs side. He did, and now he’s gone.

The memorial service for my little brother was this past Wednesday. It was a sad goodbye. As an older brother, I will always wonder if there was more I could do to bring him out of the darkness. My duty, as the eldest, was to look after him. I failed. That’s about the way I am right now. I can handle his passing, but I’m not sure I’ll ever handle my failure to him.

There was another way I wanted to remember my brother. This Saturday, I was able to bring him to the rest of my group in my New World of Darkness game. I changed his name slightly, giving him my mother’s maiden name of Eckert instead of his father’s name of Rutherford. The picture was his, as was his profession, a painter, and the way he treated the character he interacted with.

In this New World of Darkness game, I made Jack a werewolf. There was no other way. In the New World of Darkness, werewolves are beings of two different natures. So was my brother, good yet dark. The wolves also experience a bit of rage, as my brother so often did. When I read the description of how werewolves are in the Werewolf: The Forsaken, there is my brother.

At one point, he’s talking to this character, who is playing someone new to being a werewolf. He relates that sometimes it’s hard to handle your nature. It’s a constant fight that we too often don’t win. My brother lost that fight. The craziness, the rage, the hopelessness finely caught up to him. It’s like a werewolf who loses itself to rage.

It’ll be the last time anyone will see the werewolf named Jack Eckert in any of my games. It’s just something I had to do. My goodbye.

So goodbye Jack Jr.

I love you.