Walking from the train

I have my mother's cough. When I cough, I do this little throat clearing thing at the end that sounds like her, a short but business-like "heh, hem". I can even hear her as I write that: "heh, hem". Funny the things that we remember and inherit. Sometimes I can feel her expressions on my face, or see a picture of myself and see her there, in my features, my gaze, my smile. It feels strange to be a living reflection of a dead woman. My aunt often tells me that I have her hands, and once when I was visiting in the valley where she grew up, a man in a store who had known her as a girl was physically startled by our similarity. Mamaw told me the last time I left that spending time with me was like having her back again. It weighs a lot, the burden of carrying on a memory, a legacy, especially one that is not your own and one you don't even know for sure.