Most of us will instantly envision money, property, or some other item of value being passed from one to another after you die. An inheritance is commonly passed on to a family member or loved one (most family members fall into this category as well), perhaps to an organization or charity, and I’ve even read about loved cats and dogs receiving fairly large inheritances. I always assume in the case of cats and dogs that a human being is designated to sign checks, do the shopping, and feed the bequests twice a day, but that’s beside the point. Point is that a person has the option of leaving his inheritance to whoever or whatever he wants.

The most valuable inheritance I have received at this point in my life is a hammer, and an old hammer at that. It looks like it was made in the 1930’s, it’s one piece cast steel with a comfortable but not at all comfortable grip, and it has a very plain, unpolished finish, something you might see at an estate sale, pick up for a few seconds and then back down.

My grandfather gave me that hammer and I still use it to this day. He would have liked to know that with that same hammer I roofed our house, built fences high and low, ripped out old walls and built new walls, fixed things, broke things, made things fit when the gap was only a little. too small, helped the neighbors, dug rocks, and countless other chores, many of which I’ve probably forgotten by now.

However, I’ve come to realize that the usefulness of the hammer is really only a small part of inheritance. You see, every time I use that hammer with my hands (mostly my right) my memory seems to be working too! Sometimes my memories are very practical, like when my grandfather taught me how to hold a nail with pliers in a tight spot so that if you miss the nail, it’s the pliers and not your fingers that take the hit. I learned that he (and I) never stop hitting the nail on the head. When that happened from time to time, the explanation was that the nail “dodged”.

Sometimes when I use the hammer, my memories go beyond hammers and construction, however, to the weeks I spent at my grandparents’ house every summer and the marathon dominoes we competed a couple of times a day. I remember a kind of coming-of-age feeling when my grandfather informed me one summer that we would now be moving on to the double twelve game of dominoes instead of the double six game we had played for years.

During those same summer visits, I learned how to plant and care for a garden. My parents encouraged my brother and I to plant our own, and we did. At the end of the summer, we presented my grandfather with a “trophy” of bear garden, a zucchini squash almost two feet long that weighed almost as much as a pumpkin. Such a large pumpkin, of course, is not very tasty to eat, but it is still impressive. Everyone within a shout’s distance witnessed my grandfather’s approval of our gardening achievement.

When my parents moved us to a small farm and we had our own animals to raise, my grandfather of course had a lot of experience to share about horses, cows, pigs, chickens, geese, goats and ducks. Whenever he visited our home, a brief friendly greeting was always quickly followed by a request to go see the “cattle.”

However, you can say, what do dominoes, gardens and cattle have to do with a hammer?

Ah, they have nothing to do with a hammer, but everything to do with an inheritance!

Oh, some may value an inheritance in pure terms of dollars and cents, but many also understand that the true value of the inheritance is the value of the relationship. It is the link between generations in the period of time where life does not overlap and death has separated us physically but not emotionally from those we love, respect and miss dearly. You’ve heard it before, whether said with great pride or with intense emotion; “This was my mother’s ring”; “These were my father’s tools.” These mundane items carry with them the knowledge, memories, love and respect we had for the person who once owned or used them. In fact, in the closest of relationships, the inheritance becomes a symbol of many memories that, when looked at or touched, trigger memories of events, conversations, tests and celebrations shared in some way with that person.

The time to consider his the inheritance is not only during the thoughts or moments of death, but during the living of life. The substance of one’s legacy is contained within the substance of one’s relationships, and physically, those relationships are of limited time on this earth, so we must seize the moment. Words spoken for just a few moments can be told to many generations in the future. A daughter who becomes a mother has the opportunity to pass on to her own daughter the skill and wisdom that someone shared with her decades before. We all have the opportunity to invest in our own heritage while we are still on this earth, looking for those moments when we can collect and share the wisdom, knowledge and love that will add true value to future memories.

Sometime this week I’m going to get out my hammer and use it to fix or build something. And sometime this week, without effort or prompting, I will once again share in the heritage that my grandfather continues to provide. Memories can make me smile or laugh, they can make me break some, but they will never rust, they will never break, they will never wear out, they will never depreciate. They will live again and again, for the rest of my life and for another generation and one after that, and one after that and so on for as long as we wish to keep them alive!