I’ve been thinking about thanksgiving and death. Thanksgiving because the holiday is tomorrow, and because one of my son’s assignments last week was to write one hundred things for which he is thankful. It was a fun assignment. I helped him a few times when he became bogged down. (“Do you remember in preschool when you were supposed to draw a picture of something for which you were thankful and you drew spaghetti?” His list includes “spaghetti.”)

I’ve been thinking about death because my cousin’s wife passed away last week. She was only 38. She had breast cancer. She thought she had defeated it, but it returned in her lungs and then in her spinal fluid. She was happily married, a hardworking preschool teacher. She had two children, close in age to our children. I didn’t know her well, but every time I saw her, she seemed happy, bubbly, fun loving. She loved my cousin and their children, and they loved her. It was not right or fair or just for her to die.

I’ve been thinking about death, too, because my sister-in-law has lung cancer. We only recently found out about this. She had surgery the week before last, and the results were not encouraging. Then, after a few days at home, she had to return to the hospital, because of complications. She’s been in ICU for nearly a week, just trying to keep breathing, to keep living.

So it’s pretty easy to start my list and say I am thankful that I am alive, and that my husband and children and brother and sister and father and most of my family members are still living. I am deeply thankful for that. And I could continue and come up with a list of a hundred or more things and people for which I am thankful. Spaghetti might be on the list. Books would be, and many more things and people.

As I think about it, though, Thanksgiving is not just about giving thanks. “Whew, I made it through another year, and these folks are still with me, and we can walk and have jobs and a house and a car…” Don’t get me wrong. I am deeply grateful for the ordinary—and extraordinary—blessings in my life. But I’ve started to realize that thanksgiving—not just the holiday but the process of giving thanks, everyday—is not so much about the blessings as it is about what I can and should do with them.

I’m alive and I can walk. That’s really a pretty big blessing, and I have started to use my walking and running as a kind of prayer. I can run and walk and others can’t. I pray for them, and I offer my time and my energy to God for those who are in need. Does my exercise make a difference in the world? It is certainly good for me, and it could help me to be a better, stronger person, who might be able to do more good in the world. Then it might matter. I believe that prayer matters, too, and in those times when one can’t really do anything else but pray, I might as well run or walk as well.

I have time to relax. I should be using this time for something more than trolling the internet or poking around on Facebook. I love to see and hear about my friends and their families, but let’s face it: sometimes it’s just wasting time. So I’m trying to use my time doing something that seems more productive or at least less unproductive: writing this essay, reading a book that has some meaning, picking up some of the mess around the house, spending time with my family.

I have food in the pantry, while so many are hungry. What I choose to eat—what I choose to buy from the store—matters. This is simple common sense. I know what I should eat and what I shouldn’t, but I often choose to ignore my conscience in this. But if I am truly thankful for what I have, then I ought also to be a good steward of it. This means taking care of my body and financial resources, along with the planet. So what I choose to eat and purchase really does require more thought.

I could go on, but these are some of the things I’ve been thinking about, as I consider thanksgiving and death. Jeni didn’t have a chance to live beyond 38. I’ve already had more years than that, but have I contributed as much to the world as she has? I don’t know. I do know that I have many faults, among them a tendency to be crabby. I admired her happiness and joyful spirit, her willingness to do things for others. Since I have been given these days of life—for which I am thankful—perhaps I can try to continue her work by trying to be happier, more generous, more thankful.

Lately, I wake up with the sense that each day is a gift. This is fostered by the prayer I hear each day that I go to work or volunteer at the school my kids attend. Every morning on the announcements, two students lead the other children in a prayer that begins, “Thank you, Lord, for another day in which to grow in love for you and for others.” Yes, I think. Yes. I have this day. It is a gift, and I have come to understand that the meaning of the gift lies not in what it does for me, but in how I can share it with others.

Everybody else may have figured this out a long time ago. I’m a slow learner, I guess. I’m just glad that I have learned it, but I hate that it has taken death to help me learn the meaning of thanksgiving—lower-case t—because it’s not just for the fourth Thursday in November. It’s for every moment that I have received.