calling fclose on a private variable with reflection

Private variables can be set thusly:

function setVar($obj, $var, $val)
{
    $reflection = new ReflectionClass(get_class($obj));
    $prop = $reflection->getProperty($var);
    $prop->setAccessible(true);
    return $prop->setValue($obj, $val);
}

But that's not that helpful when you're dealing with a function like fclose().

Superficially it seems like something like this could work:

Private varaibles can be accessed thusly:

function &getVar($obj, $var)
{
    $reflection = new ReflectionClass(get_class($obj));
    $prop = $reflection->getProperty($var);
    $prop->setAccessible(true);
    return $prop->getValue($obj);
}

fclose(&$getVar($obj, 'fsock'));

But in my testing it doesn't seem to work.

Any ideas?