Not all separations last forever.

Gene and Barbara Swords are back together in their Brethren Village apartment, after a year of living apart.

Swords, who had a stroke in October 2006, spent months recovering in the hospital, then rehabbing at Brethren Village's health-care center.

He endured painful, exhausting therapy, relearning such basic skills as how to swallow.

Mrs. Swords compares their current challenges to raising their seven children.

"We get up in the morning, and we do it," she says. "... We're thankful for what we can do. We don't think about things we can't do."

Their morning routine now takes about three hours, with Mrs. Swords helping her husband of 58 years to shower and dress.

She has learned to safely lift him into and out of his power wheelchair and hospital bed.

"If something happens to her, I'd be in trouble," says Swords, who speaks slowly but clearly 2½ years after his stroke.

The Swordses, now 80, met as opera-loving teenagers at a church camp. Coincidentally — or not, they joke — both ended up at Elizabethtown College.

Both retired from long careers with the Lampeter-Strasburg School District. Swords was a teacher and administrator; Mrs. Swords was a reading tutor.

For many years, they performed with the Lancaster Opera Co.

Swords, a rare bass baritone, accepts that he can no longer sing solos. But he rejects the idea of never walking again.

Mrs. Swords also considers his limitations temporary.

"My goal is in three years to be able to walk," Swords says.

"I think it will happen."

The Swordses can't travel or camp anymore, and the wheelchair makes even going to the opera a challenge.

But Swords' memory — and sense of humor — are sharp. He goes to church and on outings, works puzzles and sings with the Brethren Village Men's Chorus.

Sometimes, when his therapy exercises were especially excruciating, Swords was tempted to give up.

But he says he never doubted he'd eventually come back home to his wife.

"When you get married, you say, 'For better or for worse,' " he says.

"For worse happens sometimes too."