Ruby Ring

I received an heirloom on my last visit home. It was originally a gift from my grandmother to my grandfather before they were married. It subsequently passed to my father after my grandfather's death, and now it has come to me, on the condition it'll go to my oldest nephew when I shuffle off this mortal coil.

It's a ruby, slightly scratched, set in a gold ring.

It's a humbling gift, and it made me think about my grandfather's life, and my father's, and about the ultimate inevitability of death. But at the same time the ring represents a continuance of a sort. It's a thread through the generations. In this case, the thread is all the more bitter-sweet because in each case, my grandmother personally passed on the ring as a result of a recipient's passing.