☕How many more Thanksgivings do you have left?
- David Oaks
- Apr 13
- 5 min read
Thirty years ago, Jeri Michie said “no” to me.
And I have never forgotten it.
You have to understand who Jeri was.
In my eyes, she was larger than life—admired and involved in our community as a wife, mother, educator, influencer, and up-and-coming professional.
You either knew Jeri or you knew of her.
Jeri was beautiful in every way. Positive. Forward-thinking. Progressive. Full of energy. She was the kind of person everyone wanted on their team and in their lives.
As principal of Okapilco Elementary School, she infused the place with an energy and positivity that was exhilarating. Teachers thrived. Kids flourished. You could feel it the moment you walked through the doors.
That same energy spilled over into our church, where she led our children’s ministry in the early days.
I’ll never forget the Sunday morning she rode a unicycle down the aisle during announcements—no prior planning, no forewarning. It was her way of doing an announcement in church.
And you should know that her stunt and her event were the talk of the town for a few weeks.
That was Jeri. Spontaneous. Unforgettable. Electric.
She was articulate, dynamic, the kind of leader who could turn any project from mediocre to extraordinary.
So when I asked Jeri to join an important strategic planning team at our church—a team that desperately needed people like her with vision and leadership—I was excited to think of her input on the team.
She said no.
And I have never forgotten it.
Without taking the time for forethought, she immediately replied: “David, I would love to be on that team. I’m honored you asked. But I need you to know something.” She paused.
“I only have 612 days left with my boys before they leave for college.”
The number—612 days—rolled off her tongue instantly. No hesitation. No calculation. She knew it by heart.
Six hundred and twelve days.
She had two sons, one in grade twelve and one in grade eleven. And she hadn’t just counted her remaining days at home with them—she had made them visible.
Two years before her sons were to graduate and leave home, Jeri put 730 marbles into a glass fishbowl.
Every single day that passed, like a treasure, she removed one marble—a visual reminder of her limited time remaining with her boys at home.
Every. Single. Day.
One marble. One irreplaceable day. Gone.
I was stunned.
Because in that moment, Jeri taught me something I’ve never forgotten:
When you count what’s scarce, you protect what matters.
Counting What’s Scarce
Thirty years later, I’m reading Arthur Brooks’ book From Strength to Strength, and Jeri’s fishbowl full of marbles comes rushing back to me.
Brooks challenges his university students—most of them in their twenties with their whole lives stretched out ahead of them—to answer a simple question:
How many Thanksgivings do you have left?
The answer? Maybe fifty or sixty.
Then he goes deeper: How many Thanksgivings do you have left with your parents?
Maybe twenty or thirty.
Brooks says the reaction is almost always the same: shock.
Dead silence.
That gut-punch moment when abstract time suddenly becomes real.
He calls this “denominating time in memorable, scarce events.” Years feel infinite. Decades feel distant.
But Thanksgivings? Thanksgivings feel countable.
And countable feels urgent.
So I’m sitting here asking myself the question: How many Thanksgivings do I have left?
With my parents? None. They’re both gone. With my kids? My grandkids? My friends? I honestly don’t know.
But suddenly, I’m counting in a way I never have before.
The Monks Who Stare at Death
Making Mortality Visible
Brooks goes on to describe something that seems morbid at first but is actually profound: the practice of Buddhist monks in Thailand and Sri Lanka who display photographs of corpses in various stages of decomposition on the walls of their monasteries.
To Western eyes, it seems dark. Disturbing, even. But it’s not about darkness—it’s about clarity.
The practice is called maranasati—mindfulness of death.
Monks systematically contemplate nine stages of their own body’s inevitable decay, from a swollen corpse to bones turning to dust. “This body, too,” they’re taught to say, “such is its nature, such is its future, such its unavoidable fate.”
They don’t avoid the truth.
They stare right at it.
They meditate on it.
They let it teach them how to live.
And here’s what happens: when you stop running from mortality, you get free. You stop wasting time; sweating the small stuff.
You start living like you actually mean it.
It sounds depressing. But it’s not.
It’s liberating.
Because when you face what’s inevitable—when you make it visible instead of hiding from it—you stop clinging to things that don’t matter.
You:
Stop chasing the wrong things.
Start protecting what’s precious.
Like Jeri with her fishbowl of marbles.
What Are You Counting?
Here’s what I’ve learned from Jeri and from Brooks:
When you count what’s scarce, you protect what matters.
Jeri didn’t just think about her limited time with her boys. She made it visible. She put 730 marbles in a fishbowl and watched them disappear, one irreplaceable day at a time.
The monks don’t just acknowledge mortality.
They stare at photographs of it.
They meditate on it.
They make it impossible to ignore.
And here’s the question for all of us:
What are we counting?
Not in a morbid way. Not to spiral into anxiety or regret.
But in the most clarifying, life-giving way possible.
How many more Thanksgivings do you have?
How many more Christmas mornings with your kids before they move out?
How many more summer vacations with your aging parents?
How many more chances to say “I love you” to the people who matter most?
When you start counting—really counting—everything changes.
The grudges you’ve been holding? They lose their grip. The career achievements you’ve been chasing? They get quieter. The need to be right, to be remembered, to prove yourself?
It all fades.
Because when you know the number is finite, you stop wasting time on things that don’t matter.
You start showing up differently.
You start living differently.
What I’m going to do…
I am looking for a way to share the visual reality of my twenty or so more Thanksgivings/Christmases with my children.
Not sure how I will do it… A shadowbox with American Eagles (I will give them one each year)?
What are you counting?
Maybe it’s Thanksgivings. Maybe it’s Saturday mornings. Maybe it’s bedtime stories with your kids or phone calls with your mom.
Pick something that’s scarce. Something that matters.
Something you don’t want to waste.
And then make it visible.
You don’t have to fill a fishbowl with marbles (though you could—Jeri’s method is brilliant).
The method doesn’t matter. What matters is that you stop treating time as infinite and start treating it as the precious, countable, irreplaceable gift that it is.
Because here’s the truth: you don’t have forever.
None of us do.
But you have today.
You have this Thanksgiving.
You have this Easter.
You have this summer.
You have this moment with the people you love.
And when you count it—when you make it visible, when you protect it—you honor it.
You live it fully.
You stop wasting it on things that don’t matter.
What do you think?
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