Hope Springs Eternal

I recently read a very intriguing book, "The Sherlockian" by Graham Moore. It consists of two stories in one, weaving through the fabric of time by alternating story lines with every chapter. One chapter occurs in the present day with a young man trying to solve the case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's missing diary, the one that he wrote during the time that he had killed off his hero, Sherlock Holmes. And the next will be set in the time of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, depicting what actually occurred.


Towards the end of the book our hero, Harold, has an epiphany and it caused me to ponder as well. Is life about the journey or the destination? Are we happiest when we have met a goal or when we are still striving to reach it? Harold had this to say....." He wasn't plagued by grief over the lack of answers- he was plagued by melancholy over how quickly the answers had come, and how final they appeared to be."......."He'd read thousands of happy endings and thousands of sad endings, and he found himself satisfied with both. What he had not read, he now realized, we're the moments after the endings."........"Harold had understood that not finding a solution would have been awful, but he had never before thought that finding one, and then having actually to go on living with it, might be worse."




Once again, this makes me think of my brother. (I promise to tell my brother's story soon so that we're all on the same page). My brother is missing, he has simply vanished. And it leaves behind feelings that really can't be described accurately no matter how hard you try. One tends to vasillitate between crushing despair and irrational hope. You remain hopeful that he is out there and just unable to contact you for whatever reason, and as long as you don't know, that hope remains. But at the same time you want to know. You want concrete answers......what happened? And I have told myself that if that means he is dead, I can accept that, I just want to know for certain what happened. But can I? Can I accept that? Or is it better to hold on to this hope, no matter how irrational and crushing it can be at times? Each time the phone rings it could be him, each time you catch a glimpse of someone who looks like him, it could be him, each time you come home,you just know he'll be sitting there waiting for you.....but he's not. And it is crushing. But for those few precious moments, hope remains. And it is exhilarating. Could I give all of that up for concrete answers?




Last month remains were found outside of Anchorage. I will not lie, I both hoped and feared that we would finally have our answers. Alas, the remains were identified as those of another missing man. So for now, I will continue to hope that the next phone call is from him, that I'll see him on the street or that one day.....I'll come home, and he'll be there.