Grief

Sherlock Holmes died last Sunday night.  Yes, I know it was all a fix and he'll be coming back, but his poor Watson doesn't know that, does he?

The most poignant moment of the programme for me was right at the end.  John stood over Sherlock's grave and begged him for one last miracle.

'Stop being dead.  Just stop - this.'

Thats what we all want, when someone dies.

I can remember last summer, standing outside the church after my step-father's memorial service, talking to the lay preacher, a family friend who had helped lead the ceremony.  'I just want him back,' I sobbed.

For many years I have been having dreams about my father, who died when I was 13.  In my dreams, which are not the same every time, but share the same theme, my father comes back to our family home.  He is sullen and unhappy, won't say where he has been, or whether he is staying.  There is always the suggestion that he has been with another woman, another family, elsewhere.  And there is that fear that he will go away again.  But I am just so happy to have him back that I try not to care - I just want him back.  Next month it will be 30 years since he died, and I am still having these dreams.

My point is that when somebody dies, all we want is to have them back.  But if they came back, it wouldn't be the way we want it to be, all hearts and flowers.  Life isn't like that.  There are no Jesuses, or Holmeses, to return from the dead.  We are just left to get on with living without those we love as best we can.