Let’s face it. Death is inevitable. While science works to increase the human lifespan, we’re a long way from immortality.

Museums, however, offer a certain form of immortality. The typical mission of a museum is to preserve artifacts, documents, photographs and specimens in its collections for as long as the museum exists. Ideally, that’s supposed to be forever. (For the purposes of this blog post, we’ll pretend that nothing bad ever happens to museums and that they do last forever.)

The items in a museum’s collection tell us something about the people who owned them. With the forever-ness of museums, the donors of artifacts have a chance to live on within the stories of those artifacts.

Now, let’s play an altered version of the game, “What Would You Save in a Fire if Your Family and Pets Are Safe?”

You’ve got a chance at immortality by giving one item to a museum. What item would you pick and why? What is it about this item that conveys your personality or the story of your life on earth?