Alexander Hamilton is remembered for many things, most of them in New York and Washington. It is easy to forget that he was born in the Caribbean, on Nevis, and grew up partly on St Croix, a boy of the islands long before he was a statesman. Among the writings associated with his youth is a hymn-like poem about a soul ascending to heaven, which he is said to have written as a teenager. According to the story often told about it, his wife Eliza kept a copy for the rest of her long life.
Whatever you think of Hamilton, that detail is worth pausing on. Out of everything a household accumulates over a lifetime, a widow chose to keep a young man’s words about God. It raises a question every family eventually faces: when the house is cleared, what will be worth keeping?
The drawer every family has
In many Caribbean homes there is a particular drawer, or a biscuit tin, or a suitcase under the bed. In it: a birth certificate with a faded stamp, a receipt for property tax from decades ago, a Sunday school certificate, letters from a son in England, a photograph of a wedding nobody left alive attended. And very often, a Bible with names and dates written inside the front cover, or a hymnbook with a favourite page worn soft.
When a grandmother passes, it is usually the grandchildren who open that drawer. They are often surprised by what they find. The land papers are there, which is useful. But so are the scraps of faith: a prayer copied out by hand, the order of service from a baptism, a note in the margin beside a psalm. These are the things that tell them who she really was.
Songs in the house
For generations, Caribbean homes have been singing homes. Hymns at family devotions. Choruses while washing clothes. Songs at a nine-night that carried grief better than any speech could. Many adults who have drifted from church can still sing every verse of a hymn they learned standing beside a parent. The words went in through the ears and settled somewhere deep.
Paul encouraged the early churches to be “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:19, NKJV). He was writing to congregations, but the picture works for households too. A home where faith is sung is a home where faith is remembered.
What we are actually passing on
Much of the energy of homeowners goes into things that can be measured: the house, the land, the savings, the title. These matter, and families are wise to put them in order. But the psalmist sets them in perspective: “One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts” (Psalm 145:4, NKJV). What generations pass to each other, in that picture, is not property but praise. Testimony. The story of what God has done.
Consider a family where the land has been sold, the old house has been pulled down and the relatives are scattered across three countries. On the surface, the inheritance is gone. Yet when they gather for a funeral, they all know the same hymns. They tell the same stories about the grandfather who prayed on the veranda every morning at five. Something has survived that no buyer could take.
Keeping on purpose
Most of what ends up in the drawer ends up there by accident. It does not have to be that way. A few families make a point of keeping on purpose:
- Writing names, dates and short notes in a family Bible, not just births and deaths but answered prayers and turning points.
- Recording older relatives singing their favourite hymns or telling how they came to faith, on a phone, before the chance is gone.
- Keeping important property documents together, with copies, so that the practical inheritance does not become a burden.
- Writing a letter to children or grandchildren to be opened later, saying plainly what you believe and why.
- Teaching the children the family’s songs, and singing them in the house, not just in church.
A soul ascending
There is something fitting about a young man from the islands writing about a soul going home to God. Caribbean people have always been a people of journeys: to Panama and Cuba, to England, to America and Canada, and sometimes back again. Our homes have been built, left, rented out, inherited and rebuilt. Through all of it, faith has often been the one thing carried in every suitcase.
When your own drawer is finally opened, by a grandchild in Kingston or Croydon or Queens, what will they find? The land papers, hopefully in good order. But also, perhaps, a hymn. A prayer. A few words in your handwriting about the God who kept you. Those may be the most valuable things in the house.
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