A couple of hours ago, Charlie Murray, 29, was standing below a cherry picker, where an electrician was changing a light bulb on the Warburton Ave. Bridge in our village. Charlie evidently touched a live 120-volt wire in the box in the light stanchion and, sweaty in the heat, touched the metal handrail on the bridge and was electrocuted. (See correction below)

Charlie was always working, it seemed. He put in a full day for the Department of Public Works, smiling and waving from what ever vehicle he was driving at the time — snowplow, dump truck, garbage truck. In the evening, he'd water the plants that hang from the downtown light poles with some equipment he rigged up in the back of his own pick-up. I guess he had a contract with the village. His dog — I think his name is Buster — would hang his head out the front window, panting gleefully and following Charlie's every move.

Charlie also had a landscaping business. A couple of years ago, a usually mild-mannered neighbor of mine barked at him for operating a leaf blower around dinner time. I apologized to Charlie on behalf of my friend. I later told my friend that while I empathized with his desire to eat in peace, Charlie was one leaf-blower who, in my book, deserved a break. He was just too damn nice, and he worked too damn hard. I'd heard that his goal was to make a million by 30, and retire.

Charlie's mom, Betsy, was Carrick's fourth-grade teacher. It is the last grade — perhaps the only grade until college — in which Deirdre and I felt that Carrick did well from both an academic and emotional standpoint. Mrs. Murray was stern but concerned, firm but understanding. She set standards, but realized that everyone achieves differently.

I walked to the village to do some chores this morning, and saw a yellow police line across the bridge and the DPW's cherry picker in the middle. I just figured the police were stopping traffic for a quick repair. I then headed west to the library to return some books and check in with librarian Sue Feir, a sage confident.

When I got there, Sue and Betsy Murray were talking. Betsy has volunteered at the library since her retirement a couple of years ago. The two were discussing one of those nettlesome small-town problems that's right out of Gooberville. The library set up a "take one, leave one" bookshelf in the commuter train station a few month ago. It appears that someone is coming in and taking all of the books for resale. My contribution to the conversation was a suggestion that they check with the station master, Pete, to see if he'd seen anything. Sue later told me that she and Betsy also had been talking about Charlie. Sue jokingly said that she was shocked to hear that Charlie had actually taken a day off to boat on the Hudson River yesterday, a favorite activity of his.

Just before we received word that the police had found Betsy at the library and escorted her out with grim faces, Sue and I compared notes on our weekends. I told her that we had received some harrowing e-mails that made our story seem like Easy St. We are wrestling with what to say to people who feel that they have tried everything and have nowhere else to turn.

Of course, nobody's story is really "better" or "worse" than anybody else's when you know that your loved one is teetering between life and death. Charlie's death drives home once again how relative the word teeter can be, and how much grief one can feel for people who have touched our lives even tangentially.

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An autopsy subsequently determined that Charlie had a congenital heart condition.