The Houses We Leave Standing Empty After a Funeral

Drive through almost any rural district in Jamaica and you will see them. A solid concrete house with a verandah, the grilles rusting at the corners, the yard gone to bush, a mango tree dropping fruit that nobody picks up. Ask a neighbour and the answer is usually the same: “Miss Gloria dead about eight years now. The children dem abroad. Nobody decide what to do.”

It is one of the quiet sorrows of Caribbean family life. We give our parents big funerals, with a proper repast and a nine night that goes on until morning, and then we leave the house they spent forty years building to slowly fall down around their memory.

Why the doors stay locked

There are practical reasons, and they are real. The title may still be in a grandparent’s name. There may be no will, or a will nobody can find. Five siblings live in four countries and have never once been on the same video call. One brother lives nearby and feels he has earned the house by cutting the grass; a sister in Birmingham sent money home every month for the roof and feels the same. Probate or administration of an estate takes time, money and paperwork that nobody feels ready to face.

But underneath the paperwork there is usually something else. Opening that door means walking past Mama’s church hat on the dresser and her reading glasses on the side table. Deciding to sell, rent or renovate feels like a second death, a final admission that she is not coming back. So we do what grief often does. We postpone. The house becomes a shrine that no one visits.

What the silence costs

An empty house does not stay still. In a tropical climate it deteriorates quickly: termites find the roof timbers, damp gets into the walls, gutters clog and overflow, and one hurricane season with a loose sheet of zinc can let in enough water to ruin a ceiling. Unoccupied property can attract squatters or thieves who strip copper wiring and fixtures. Property taxes still fall due. And every year of delay tends to make the family conversation harder, not easier, as positions harden and memories of who paid for what grow more selective.

There is a relational cost too. Many families who were close while a parent was alive begin to drift once the one person who held them together is gone. The unsettled house becomes a sore spot that nobody mentions at Christmas. Cousins grow up knowing only that there is “a problem with Grandma’s place.”

A hard saying, gently applied

In Luke 9, a man tells Jesus he will follow Him, but first he must go and bury his father. Jesus replies: “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60). It is one of the more startling things He ever said, and it is not a licence to skip a funeral. Its heart is a call to turn towards life, and not to let what has ended hold hostage what is still living.

A family house left to rot for a decade can become exactly that kind of hostage. The living, grandchildren who could use a home, a sibling who needs somewhere to retire, a young couple who would pay a fair rent, are kept waiting on behalf of someone who, if she could speak, would probably be vexed to see her kitchen in that state. Most parents who built a house did it so their family would have somewhere to stand. Honouring them may mean putting it back to use.

Bringing a house back to life

Consider a family of four siblings, spread between Mandeville, Brooklyn and Toronto, whose mother’s house has been locked for six years. Nothing dramatic breaks the logjam. One of them simply books a call, and instead of opening with “what are we going to do with the house?”, she opens with “how is everybody?” It takes three more calls before anyone mentions money.

Families who move forward usually do some version of the same few things:

• They find out where things legally stand. An attorney-at-law can explain whose name is on the title, whether there is a will, and what steps are needed to settle the estate. Guesswork fuels most of the arguments.
• They protect the house in the meantime. Even before any decision, someone arranges for the roof to be checked, the yard cleared and the doors secured. It is easier to agree about a house that is still standing.
• They name the options honestly. Sell and share the proceeds. Let one sibling buy the others out. Rent it and split the income. Let a family member live there under a written arrangement. Each has trade-offs, and none will make everyone perfectly happy.
• They separate the house from the memories. Clearing Mama’s things is done slowly, together if possible, with time for stories. Keeping the Bible and the photographs is not the same as keeping every room frozen.
• They write things down. Whatever is agreed goes on paper, so the next generation does not inherit the same fog.

Turning towards the living

There is nothing wrong with grief taking its time. Some families need a year or two before anyone can bear to talk about the house. But there is a difference between mourning and drifting, and most of us know which one we are doing.

Paul wrote to the Colossians that they had been “delivered from the power of darkness” and brought into the kingdom of God’s Son (Colossians 1:13). The faith many of our parents lived by was fundamentally a faith that looks forward. It seems fitting, then, that the homes they left should not be monuments to an ending, but places where life carries on: a light in the window at night, children’s slippers by the door, a mango tree with someone underneath it again.

If there is a house like that in your family, perhaps the first step is not a decision at all. It is simply a phone call.

This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.

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