My wife is sick. Nothing serious, mind you, just a terrible summer cold. But she's also dealing with dental work that torments her. The important thing to know is that when she feels lousy, I feel lousy.

I depend on her for so much -- like husbands everywhere, I depend on her to prepare my food, to keep the house organized and picked up. I also depend on her for companionship. The alternative is cold cereal every meal and long silent evenings.

Yes, maybe my dependency is disgusting, but I've lived with Alice for 51 years so she's part of the air I breathe and the person I most want to talk to when I get home at the end of the day. When I'm depressed, tired or confused I want her to be there to hear me rattle and rail at the world. I want to see her in our living room, or in our garden, puttering and digging, the cat nearby.

She understands my idiosyncrasies, my pet peeves and my sense of humor. She's wise and sensible, so I look to her for counsel. I enjoy her occasional wanderings as she finally gets to the point of her stories.

Now she's in bed, coughing and blowing her nose, in pain, remote and inaccessible. I'm miserable -- the dull echoes of my footsteps rattle my sense of well-being. Her illness suggests the unspeakable loneliness a widower experiences. I want her back.

You've probably heard the one about the wife who takes her husband to the doctor. The doctor says, "I don't like the looks of your husband. She says, "I don't either, but he's good to the children."

I know I don't measure up in every way, but Alice is used to me. For that reason alone, I hope I've earned a place at the celestial table when the time comes.

Being really sick is the pits. I've had some bouts with serious illness myself -- you don't get to be my age without an ailment, an infirmity or some affliction that reminds you of your own mortality. And on those rare occasions when I'm cooped up in a sickbed I need a wife who understands me and can put up with my grumpiness.

Illness is such a canker on the soul. It weighs one down and calls into question past joys and those easy affirmations that fall glibly from the tongue.

I usually ignore my headaches and sore throats as long as possible. If I can't get up in the morning I know I'm either sick or dead. Sometimes I wish for the latter.

I had rheumatic fever when I was in second grade when my family lived in Peoria, Ill. Actually, I spent most of second grade in bed. It wasn't too bad because I entertained myself by going through the Montgomery Ward catalog and admiring the women wearing girdles and thick crisscrossed brassieres. If I had been older maybe this idle activity would have led me into a life of evil debauchery, but illness and youth saved me from that.

During this dark period, when I was 8 years old, my parents hired a tutor -- a beautiful young woman who came upstairs to our second floor apartment to tutor me in English, science and arithmetic. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but the heady, warm aroma of Miss Turnhill leaning over my bed in that upstairs Peoria apartment probably aided my recovery.

But rheumatic fever didn't make me smarter. I still failed second grade and had to take it again the next year.

I have great sympathy for those who are chronically ill. My mother was sick most of her life. She defied the odds after having every chronic disease possible and then, over the years, having all unnecessary organs surgically removed. But she was a fighter and a woman of spirit and died just a couple of years ago at age 92.

Rudyard Kipling, a man my mother admired and quoted often, once wrote, "The cure for this ill is not to sit still, or frowst [lounge about] with a book by the fire; but to take a large hoe and a shovel also, and dig till you gently perspire."

In the face of all the medical options we have [just pay attention to the TV remedies that promise good health], maybe we need to ignore all those medical promises and face our illnesses, maybe even perspire gently, and then ignore those infirmities that can be ignored.

Dan Harper is an Aptos photographer, journalist and former English department chairman at Cabrillo College. He can be reached via e-mail at dnaharp@pacbell.net. His column appears occasionally.