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Our bathroom is a mosquito nursery. It seems there are one or two there every morning. Bonnie spots them and, if they are in range, dispatches them with the fly swatter kept there. For more difficult shots, I swing into action.

The other morning I was shaving when the characteristic whine and a close flyby signaled we had missed one. With intense purpose, she made for my arm and burrowed through the hair to feed.

Managing to avoid flaying myself as I swung - I got it! After my swing, deadly accurate I might add, the mosquito continued to sit on my arm. Not all crushed and askew, the usual result of a defensive action, but still upright, still whole, just not alive.

Even though I quickly brushed the lifeless form from my arm, the image stays with me. That little form, a moment ago intent on life, now lifeless.

It is such a binary thing, either something is alive or it isn’t .

Mind you, this is not a discourse on the meaning of life. I leave that to others.

Nor does it concern lofty topics such as creationism vs. evolution. I mostly line up on the side of evolution but steer from that irrelevant shoal and sail on.

By the same token, the consequences of life do not concern me here. I suppose there is a heaven and hell – from an early age I have had it drummed into me, but somehow I suspect everything just ends.

Enough on what this is not about.

I return to the binary nature of life. I admit a fascination that springs from more than the occasional hit on a whining mosquito. At the tender age of 10, I watched my first deer go lifeless. A wonderful dog named Ginger, her kidneys destroyed by poison, yielded to the expert ministrations of a vet. And that night so long ago, we raced through the night, arriving minutes before hearing my mother’s gentle voice giving my father permission to go, and he was no more.

One moment life, the next, not. What a magical moment, the moment life leaves. And so final.

The lesson? Use your life well. When it is gone, it is gone.