More Lestrade’s mum headcanon

This bit has to do with Catholicism.

Lestrade’s mum was very religious. Every Sunday she would cart the gaggle of children off in their finest clothing to Mass, where they’d squirm and complain, yet somehow had all the rituals ingrained into them perfectly. 

Greg didn’t really question this ritual until his early teens, when he discovered punk music. He started hanging out with a rougher crowd, and his beliefs changed slightly. Plus he was a teenager, he liked to be rebellious. But it all amounted to his gradual disbelief in God. He still attended Church for a while, if only out of guilt at breaking his mum’s heart, and to help keep the younger siblings in line. 

But around the age of 15 he stopped going. He told his mum he didn’t believe in God, he didn’t like the practices of the Church, and also he was in a punk rock band. 

Mrs. Lestrade didn’t yell, she wasn’t even mad. She accepted his decision with a silent heart-ache. Lestrade’s Catholic guilt did not go the way of his belief in God, and it made him anxious. But he couldn’t just pretend. 

He grew up, mellowed out, got a job as a police officer, she was so proud. 

Then she got sick. Very sick, and he came to visit her every day in the hospital. 

Towards the end, when he visited her, she asked him if he still did not believe in God. He swallowed hard, but he couldn’t lie to her. No, he said. 

She said she wished he would. How it would make her so much happier if she could know that he knew she was watching over him when she passed.Didn’t he want to know she’d always be with him?  Couldn’t he bring himself to believe in that? 

He’d seen so much in his few years as a police officer. He was a good man, an honest man. He told her he loved her so much, but no. He did not believe in God. 

His greatest regret, perhaps up until the Fall, was that he didn’t just. Lie.