The person photographing an heirloom before giving it away is finding another way to keep the connection.

Letting something go and keeping the connection are not the only two options. A photograph, a written description, a note about who owned it: these hold what the object carried while the object itself moves to where it is wanted or needed. What you were attached to was rarely the material anyway. It was the fact of a person, and that can be kept in a form that does not need a shelf.

Before you pass anything on, spend ten minutes recording it. A picture and a few sentences about where it came from make giving it away feel like a transfer rather than a loss.