An Open Letter to Jeff Wilfahrt Father of Cpl. Andrew Wilfahrt (May 7, 1979 - February 27, 2011)

 Jeff (at podium) and Lori (r) Wilfahrt, father and mother of  Cpl Andrew Wilfahrt, gay soldier 

Dear Jeff, may I call you Jeff?

I do not know why I have been so impacted by the death of you and your wife Lori's son Andrew, so much. I suppose some of it is due to the fact that I was introduced to your son through a powerful, passionate and fitting tribute to him given by Representative John Kriesel (R) on the floor of the Minnesota legislature last month.

I don't even remember how I first found the video of that speech. When I did, I watched it over and over and over again. I watched it all day.

I have spent over 20 years of my life sharing time with men in various situations, as a therapist and spiritual director. During all of those years, no matter what was presented to me as the "problem," the real underlying issue so often was simply these mens failure to move past the conditioning that exists in this culture that does not allow men to express the full scope of emotions that are naturally available to all men and women. From this seemingly small complication came the avalanche of so many other problems. Yet here was this man (Rep. Kriesel), a military man and a member of the Minnesota legislature, expressing any number of what had to be uncomfortable emotions for him and doing so publicly at that. I could see the emotion on his face. I could hear the emotion in his voice. And it was when he spoke of your son when the emotion was the strongest, the most apparent. There was a nanosecond where, during his speech, if one looked carefully, one could see where Rep. Kriesel almost completely lost it. That nanosecond came when he was speaking of your son, Andrew. And I thought, "the spirit of Andrew is with him now while he's speaking. Andrew must have been an incredible human being, an incredible man if he can inspire, even in his spirit form, a republican politician and career military man, whose whole life has been about controlling emotions, to express them, now openly to the world."

Later, I also found on the internet, a video of you Jeff speaking, with your wife Lori at your side, at a rally in Minnesota on a windy, blustery April 14th day, less than 2 months after your sons death. You began your speech by stating that if you held your right index finger up it meant you were going to cry and would need to pause. And indeed, later in your speech, you needed to raise your index finger.

When I was 29 years old, twenty-two years ago, I lost the man who even to this day remains the most important and positively influential man in my life---Dr. Maurice Strider---my maternal grandfather. I was asked by my grandmother to speak at his funeral, to essentially give his eulogy. I gladly accepted the invitation. The funeral was held at the catholic church our family had been a member of for three generations. My older sister and I had both attended school there. I was a personal friend of the priest. My grandfather had many friends. This meant the church was packed. Years earlier I had been a member of the forensics and debate teams in college. I had won an important award in public speaking my junior year. Yet halfway though my remembrance of my grandfather, I completely broke down and started weeping profusely. The priest had to get out of his seat and walk me away from the lectern. The choir had to start singing many minutes before they were scheduled to. That is the day I learned to stop trying to stuff my emotions. It is a day I became free, just as free as if I had been enslaved by some powerful force for the entire 28 proceeding years. I have learned to be exceedingly grateful for that day Jeff. For in many ways that is the day I became human.

I am wise enough to know I do not know the personal pain you have experienced as the result of the loss of your son Andrew, Jeff. I do however, know what it means to be a man who has experienced a loss so significant that all the social and cultural mores against being a man and crying in public become utterly and completely meaningless, if in fact they ever really had any meaning.

One of the awarenesses I have about men is that so many of us have fathers who we cannot really and deeply talk to, who are ashamed of us on some level, who never believed in us or really supported us or have never told us they loved us. When I hear you speak of your gay son with such affection, such beauty, such pride and compassion, I am given hope that all the rifts that have been created within so many father-son relationships can indeed be healed and transformed. It gives me hope that at some point all men will break through the glass ceiling of emotional  stuntedness and reclaim our natural birthright of feeling and acknowledging the entire range of the emotional spectrum available to all Human Be-ings. Thank you for that Jeff. You have given us all an important gift through your public grief, your humanity, your pain, your vulnerability and your capacity to love a son so many fathers would have been ashamed of and are ashamed of. You are your sons father and he is your son. And you have shown the world what a beautiful relationship that can be. Thank you!

With Love,
Your Brother,
sage