Prayer for the Sick - Hard to be Happy

During the Shabbat morning service, we recite a prayer for the sick, a paradoxical prayer, in some ways, because on Shabbat you aren't actually supposed to ask God for anything. In typical Jewish fashion, we make a rule that is hard to obey (don't ask God for favors on days of rest) and then find a way of doing it anyhow.
In many synagogues, the rabbi or cantor reads a long list of people whose names were given to him earlier, and in other synagogues people come up to the prayer leader and whisper the name to him, so that he can say it out loud. This is a rather boring custom, and in our synagogue a woman recites a general prayer for the sick, and individuals silently recall the people whom they want to bless.
I have a lengthening list of people whose names I say to myself (I don't think anyone else is listening in on my thoughts) during that prayer. The list is shortened occasionally, when one of them passes away.
I remember Kathy G., who has been battling with Parkinson's disease for a decade or more, Andrea P. and Jean-Claude J., who both have multiple sclerosis, Philip H., who has such serious cancer that he doesn't know whether he will live for another year or just another month or two, and Eli S., who has been suffering from schizophrenia for at least twenty years. Now my wife reports that her friend Ziva is very ill with leukemia.
As we head for our late sixties, more and more of our friends and relatives are going to get sick and die, until it's our turn. So, although there are wonderful moments of joy in our life, on the balance, we can't say that we're happy.
Rejecting the moments of joy because the overall picture is so bleak would be like not turning on the heat in the winter, because it's so cold anyway.
Recently we saw a documentary about Jean-Claude, an avant-garde musician who has come to that through rock and roll and jazz. He suffers from his disease, and yet he manages to salvage moments of joy. The film is full of those moments, mainly when he's playing the bass. He accepts both the pain and the pleasure. He has no choice about the pain. It comes with his degenerative disease.
"Courage" is the wrong word for his attitude.
You could look through the thesaurus for a long time before you found the right one.