A pain here. A cough there. It passes by the normal, healthy people like a fly buzzing around their head, unnoticed. But for the sick and those who love them, it is a red light warning sign, a note scribbled on a messy tablet, "Something to tell the doctor."

Sam coughs four, maybe five before he falls asleep. It is deep and low, rattling his bones like the wind rattles an old attic window. Are his lungs failing? I wonder.

The warnings on the bleomycin drug card loop in my head like a recorded subway message: "Report persistent dry cough or shortness of breath to your physician or nurse," except that my brain gets stuck on the dry cough part and forgets the rest. I find I'm forgetting a lot of things these days.

I sleep ever so lightly, my ears alert. I listen for his breathing: in, out, in, out. If I don't hear it, I move closer to him my head next to his, listening for the movement of air. It is faint, like a breeze whispering through the willow tree in our backyard, its branches rustling like sand. Swish, swish.

The doctor asks if he's had problems with coughing as she listens to his lungs the next day. I tell her, he coughed four times last night. She doesn't think I'm crazy, but I feel like a paranoid old coot. This is what happens to you when your husband is sick. You become as crazy as a bat.

"It might have been something..." then she waves her hand in the air, near her throat, showing me it could have been anything. It makes me feel better, if only for a moment.

"You've come a long way Sam," she says.

It is a small thing to say, but for us it is pure bliss, enough to survive on another day. This is how we live now, on moments of bliss.

For the cancer patient, bliss is a day with no shots, or maybe having a needle stick you only once. Bliss is watering the plants or folding clean laundry and not needing a nap afterward. It's a night of sleeping, instead of tossing and turning. And it's your wife sleeping too, instead of laying awake with her eyebrows knotted up. It's a letter in the mailbox saying, "Fight this disease with prayer and determination" and then seeing that letter again on a bad day. It's children who see past baldness and instead say, "I like your haircut." It's those same children who pray for your sick body to get better, never for once doubting that it won't happen. Is this what Jesus meant when he said, "For the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these"?

Children believe in miracles because they are untainted by the world's cynicism. Even children with cancer don't know to be sick. They go on dancing while the world looks on astonished, our mouths gaping open. Is this what gives sick children a higher survival rate? Could joy be the healing balm of the sick?

"A merry heart is good medicine," says the old Proverb, but it is hard to be merry these days. We are learning to live on the small joys, those moments of bliss that come hidden in the miniscule packages of life. We dance like fools even when we do not feel like it. We dance to be well again.
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