THE SOULMATE

Today's Weather: Snow! It will most definitely be a white Merry Solstikah (and it was. I started this blog entry last month... but life intervened.)
Today's Emotional Barometer: A mixture of melancholy and joy
Today's Playlist: MY LOVE by SIA , I DROVE ALL NIGHT by Roy Orbison , UNCHAINED MELODY by The Righteous Brothers , I DON'T WANNA MISS A THING by Aerosmith , CAN'T HELP FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOU by Elvis Presley , MAY THIS BE LOVE (WATERFALL) by Jimi Hendrix , LOVE IS ALL AROUND by The Trogs , EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE by The Police , TAKE MY BREATH AWAY by Berlin
(RaleyBlueNote: every song listed above or in the text was a personal favorite shared by Axl and me.)

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The word soulmate is thrown around a lot. There are so many definitions and descriptions. Some claim you only have one, as your other half was lost to you long before the days of a certain hemlock swilling philosophers. It's all very Jerry Maquire and "You complete me." Others say we have many, or that you can even become soulmates by choice with another. Other examples have sited that soulmates can indeed be simply kindred spirits and need not have any romantic or sexual component. I honestly have no words to describe what a soulmate is, but I know I had one. His name was Axl Blue.

He was an Aspie just like me and we spoke best through pictures and music...

The first time I ever saw Axl, he was driving a 1963 Mercury Monterey with the drop engine. I was walking down to the grain elevator (the same one Axl would work at the last few years of his life. Though when I met him, he worked on a horse ranch, breaking horses.) with my sister to buy some 50lb bags of dog food. We were walking slowly because it was hot outside and carying 100lbs of dogfood (50lbs on each shoulder) is hard work. So we were talking and taking in the scent of lilacs on the wind when this beautiful Merc cruises by. I have always liked vintage cars. I have always LOVED fast cars. I am a little embarrassed to say, but not too much so, as Axl loved a fast car too, that I noticed the car before I noticed the boy. He must have noticed me though, because in very UN-Axl-like fashion, he called out, "Like what ya, see?" And then he winked and and gunned the engine with a huge smile as he sped off down the road. My sister looked at me and said, "One of us is probably going to marry that boy." MERCURY BLUES by Alan Jackson

Marry him, I did. Secretly. One day in April, twenty years ago. When I was only eighteen. Because he answered the question exactly right. I asked him one night, when we were out walking on the prairie in the moonlight, where he would go if he could anywhere back in time. He said, "Right here, this place. See what it looked like before man."  And thus LIFE began. WHAT IS A YOUTH from Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet
(The pic above of us in jeans was taken at about that time. It is strange to note that the house that pic was taken in, is also gone. The close friend who took it, no longer a close freind. I am the only piece of this picture left...)

GOING TO THE CHAPEL by The Dixie Cups

About a year and a half later we got "Church Married" to please the family and the community. Of course they still weren't very pleased. And some even remain displeased to this day. It's funny what people hold onto.

I held onto Axl. My dad stood with me downstairs in the Bride room until it was time, but then he put my hand in Axl's and told him I wasn't his to give. So we walked down that aisle hand in hand. To Paul Stookey's THE WEDDING SONG.

Axl had tears in his eyes when he told me how pretty I looked. The only other real memory I have is of the sunshine pouring into the stained glass shield of the trinity portal window. It had been raining all morning, but right as we walked into that sanctuary, the clouds parted. And the light danced on my veil along with all the light from the candles and made rainbows everywhere inside that chiffon world. I felt like I was living in a rainbow.

SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW-WONDERFUL WORLD by Israel Kamikawawiwo'Ole

WHITE WEDDING by Billy Idol

HOMETOWN HONEYMOON by Alabama

YOUNG TURKS By Rod Stewart

THE WORLD BEGAN...

 It was a MADNESS by Muse full of passion. We loved hard. We fought hard. We loved hard again. Sometimes we joked marriage had ruined a perfectly good friendship. Neither of us meant it.

I was especially smitten... MAYBE IT WAS MEMPHIS by Pam Tillis

This was our song:
LIVIN' ON LOVE by Alan Jackson I always think about riding along in that Chevy S10 when I hear it.

 

The pics with all of us, are the only two we ever took of our whole family. Guess we thought we had forever....
OUR HOUSE by Crosby, Stills and Nash

SHAKE IT UP by The Cars

We danced at EVERYONE'S wedding. I broke so many high heels and lost so many earrings... Axl used to joke to our hosts, "Well, Raley's starting to lose her clothes, so we better get home while the gettin's still good," and then he'd wink and add, "if ya know what I mean."

Handfasting in our Tenth Year of Celebrating Love and Family. WILD HONEY by U2

HARVEST MOON by Neil Young 

THEN HE KISSED ME by The Crystals

We touched all the time. Almost always walked hand in hand or so close, we moved as one. Axl had a way of kissing me that made the entire world melt away... as if we were the only two people in it.

FOREVER YOUNG by Rod Stewart

We were always hatching plans... the latest was to finally get serious about moving Up North where I'd spent some of my happiest younger years, and was quickly becoming a second home to our little family.

(Axl knew all the lyrics to Fergie's FERGALICIOUS and Icona Pop's I LOVE IT which he discovered on his fortieth birthday and ALWAYS sang along with as loudly as possible.)

This was our little piece of paradise. EL PARADISO by Hans and Ellen Kollmannsberger

Maria Callas singing AVE MARIA.... but sometimes other plans are held for us... I have no idea if he knew or not. Many little things have led me to believe he did.

Like this pic below... I was so irritated when I found it on the camera from the trip Up North we'd taken just three weeks before he died. When I confronted him about "full body butt shots," he smiled and kissed me so tenderly. Then he said, "I was sitting there on the beach and thinking, 'This. This is my family.' How could I not take a picture of that?"

DREAMS by The Cranberries ...Axl knew I had been questioning the faith for a long time before he passed. The night he was "Church Buried" or memorialized by his family, who are new to cremation without visitation, he sent me one final rainbow (below) over our childhood homes, and a special little faery ring (above) outside the church. While he may not be able to give me all the answers I seek, he has certainly given me all the signs that I could ask for to show the path we all journey leads to nothing but goodness, light and love.

The last songs we shared were Phillip Phillips's HOME and GONE GONE GONE. Our very last song was Rhianna's STAY . I was surprised to find him singing along to it with the radio when were traveling in Michigan for the last time. As was our custom, we started dissecting it, and I said I felt like it captured a lot of what I felt for him, but it was almost as if she was trying to say something more, something deeper. And he answered, "Honey, she's singing to God."

He would have loved Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's SAME LOVE , Imagine Dragon's RADIOACTIVE, Lorde's ROYALS, American Authors THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE and New Politics HARLEM . I so wish he was here to share them with us. But we just crank that radio and sing along even louder. We have to believe somehow, somewhere, he hears us.

People ask me all the time if I think Axl Blue was my one and only soulmate. I don't really know how to answer that. On the one hand, I hope not. I would love to have that kind of bond with another human being again. On the other... after all this... I wouldn't be surprised if I got it all and then some for this lifetime. So for now I am THE WANDERER by Johnny Cash and my only hope of being with Axl again is IN DREAMS by Roy Orbison. But what dreams they are...