A watch handed down from your grandfather still ticks. Funny how the thing that measures time is the thing that outlasts people.

The measuring device outlasting what it measured is a strange and useful joke. A watch built to track somebody’s hours keeps running after the hours stopped, which puts your own scale in front of you the way no lecture could. It does something warmer too, because anything handed down carries the person with it, so winding it is a small form of contact. Objects can hold a relationship open.

If something was passed to you, use it rather than storing it. Wear the watch, cook with the pan, take the tools out. Being used is what the object was for, and use keeps the story attached to it.