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I have used this weekly column space for different things through the years.
It's been a place to gripe, poke fun, observe, share, marvel, laugh, educate, remember, reflect and witness.
Today it's all that mixed together in some respects, but it's more so to publicly grieve.
And that's nothing new.
I've written in this space many, many times, for example, about my dad, Jay W. "Pidge" Hout, gone nearly 30 years now.
My mother, Ruth Ann Hout, her five-year anniversary came just last week, which is hard to wrap my brain around the reality that it's been that long already.
My cousin Ronnie Hout, the disbelief that he's gone as present in my thoughts today as it was the day he died on May 2, 2022.
And now my oldest sister Linda, a one-year battle against pancreatic cancer lost in the late afternoon of Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023, the white flag of surrender waved. No more treatments. No more hospice.
I was coming back from the barn, "feeding the ponies" as I say these days, when Better Half called out from the back kitchen door that my brother-in-law Bob was on the phone.
Dread rushed through me with the force of a high tide wave from which you can't escape that smacking, knock-you-off-your-feet impact.
"Your sister left us at 5:10 p.m. today" was the husband-holding-it-together message I didn't want to hear but had honestly ultimately been expecting.
So there were five Hout siblings but now there are four -- Linda the eldest, who took me, the youngest, "the baby bird," under her wings many times.
How naive of me to think that my circle of siblings would never shrink. You refuse to believe that your foundation of family, the people who really know you and can validate your existence, will ever be chipped away.
Linda would be annoyed that I am even devoting this space to her, given her no-fuss, never-mind-now mentality. A woman not given to tears.
Our last phone conversation from her home in South Carolina came with a strict big-sister scolding.
It was a conversation where the attempt to just talk normal as if nothing's wrong got trumped by reality at my doing.
It was the matter-of-fact announcement from one so super organized that she'd be "checking out soon" that brought an abrupt silence, then sniffles and a sob from the other end of the line.
She clucked her tongue with haste. "Now stop that! I don't like that! You'll be fine," came the directive.
I honored the order.
We didn't see each other with great frequency because of distance but it didn't impact our closeness through the years with a "brief chat" in the 60-to-90-minute range.
Our big family get-togethers came once a year, the last in August 2021. Christmas brought the diagnosis; January 2022 the beginning of treatments and with it, no desire for travel or visitors.
I thank God that he blessed me with such a sister and for my memories of her -- from our days of drinking beer and singing "Sisters" from "White Christmas" with reckless abandon to all the times she sent me surprise packages that always left me shaking my head, laughing to myself and thinking "Oh, that Linda!"
One of the sweetest sympathy cards I got bore the message, "While the rest of the world carries on as though nothing has happened, remember that others know your world will never be the same."
So true that is.