Going Without Peggy
by Karl Stuart Kline
Category: Poetry

Epilepsy, a mutual disability since childhood, was the unlikely catalyst that engendered a lifelong romance. A mutual understanding and commitment that amazed other people, even twenty years after we had first met and led to our elopement against her parents' wishes. A seventeen-year honeymoon that made the hard times and heavy loads easy to bear, knowing that we had all we needed as long as we had each other. Then there was breast cancer, a drawn-out and hard-fought illness that we couldn't defeat, facing death at the end just as we had faced life-together and hand in hand. Romance, devotion, disability, death, depression, bereavement and recovery... all words that oversimplify and understate the struggles and physical realities that are all part of what may be seen in retrospect as one of the greatest love stories of our time. A love story that is ongoing and reflects the undying devotion of her surviving husband. Peggy always believed that we were reunited lovers from a former lifetime and that "Greensleeves" was our song. Perhaps we will be reunited and "lost lovers will be lovers again." Prose and poetry come together in this volume to tell a story of love like no other.