A window washer fell from our building today. I didn't see him fall. Other people in our office heard a loud crashing explosion, and our computers flashed. They thought we had been hit by lightning or maybe a car had hit a pole or something.

He was lying on the ground below our executive director's office. He wasn't bleeding too much, in fact, I didn't see any blood at all till they took him away.

Some bystanders had gathered to help. Someone had draped a blue plaid blanket over him so all that was visible were his feet, at askew positions nonconformant with general human anatomy. Someone was holding his head. He was probably in shock.

The ambulance was speedy in its arrival, which is rare, and they worked on him very quickly, cutting away his clothes and getting him on a stretcher with a neck brace and intubating him. They didn't perform CPR or bring out the defibrillator.

Their speed in all their actions indicated that he was indeed, alive.

They moved him onto the stretcher and there was little to no blood on the pavement beneath him, which was good, I guess. Nothing looked particularly crushed, but as they moved his arm I could see that it was like a spagetti noodle, no bone-rigidity to it, so it was certainly broken too.

They put him in the ambulance and sped away. When they put him in, he was still alive.

We weren't sure how it happened. One theory was that he had just fallen from the platform while washing the windows, not wearing his safety harness, and hit a transformer on a pole on the way down, which would have broken his fall.

But we finally received the real story.

He was on the roof with his mate, and they were moving the platform from one side of the building to the next. Somehow, something got jumbled and a cable bearing electricity became free and electrocuted him, which caused him to fall from the roof. We can only assume he was unconscious from the electrocution before he fell, so he didn't experience that horror. Our building is 14 floors high, one of the lowest in the downtown area. Makes no difference.

He didn't make it. He died.

I'm glad, in a way. His body looked so broken and his legs looked as though they were someone else's entangled with his own body. Who knows what other damage. Brain damage, broken spine, neck, ribs, punctured organs. He wouldn't have been whole. His life would be changed forever.

In the same breath, I'm not his family. When it's someone you love, you want them there, even if they were just a brain in a jar of electrolytic fluid hooked up to wires and a speech box. You don't care what state they're in. You want them there. Alive, in any condition.

Just a year and a half ago, almost two, another window washer had fallen from the building next door. They now have nets up and glass partitions. Apparently he fell on someone else, killing two. He died on impact, as that building is probably around 25 floors or more.

I feel terrible for this boy's family. He was quite young, looked big, muscular, healthy. I feel terrible for his mate that watched this happen. He's going to relive this accident for the rest of his life. He'll probably change professions. I feel terrible because the whole reason he was up there was to clean our stupid windows.

I would rather have dirty windows that black out the sun with grime, and give those three people, countless people's lives back.

Rest easy, window washer.