Mary Meyer sat down to dinner with her two sons at their Tualatin home late last year with the wind whipping outside.
Six towering firs and a maple in the backyard swayed as her 7-year-old asked: "Is that like the tree that hit dad?"
Meyer's husband, Portland Officer Paul Meyer, lay in a hospital, paralyzed from the waist down. Just days before, a 110-foot section of a dead Douglas fir had snapped and toppled onto him during a police ATV training exercise along a remote trail on Hayden Island.
Within weeks of the boy's unsettling question, all those trees in the family's backyard -- cut down.
"As much as we loved them," Mary Meyer said, "we didn't need them to be a constant reminder of what happened."
Life in the Meyer home has changed dramatically.
Paul Meyer, a 20-year Police Bureau veteran who was in tip-top shape, an active member of the tactical squad and lead instructor on special weapons, suddenly found himself needing the help of others. Help to use the bathroom, to get dressed, to get in and out of a car. His wife gave up her part-time marketing job to become his primary care giver.
"You get in this kind of work so you're there for others," Meyer said. "To be in a position where you have to accept help, it's hard. It's humbling. You feel unworthy of it."
Though he's remarkably upbeat and positive, often greeting people with hugs and high-fives, Meyer admits to having difficult days. It's hard for him to look at his legs, once muscular, thinning from atrophy. He's disturbed he can't wrestle or play ball with his sons.
But he's grateful to have survived.
"What would Christmas had been like last year if this would have happened differently? What would that have been like for my kids and my wife? I'm the luckiest guy in the world," he said. "I get to see my kids every day and they get to see their dad everyday."
Meyer was riding an ATV about 20 to 30 mph, ready to break for lunch with fellow officers, when the fir came down on a stormy Nov. 19 and hit him on the top of his head and upper back. The force cracked his helmet. It crushed his thoracic and lumbar vertebrae and fractured cervical vertebrae.
As he recovered in the hospital, Mary Meyer scoured the Internet to find a temporary home he could negotiate with a wheelchair. Close friends helped move all their furniture, belongings and wall hangings to set them up in the rental about four miles away. The owner made the bathroom door wider and took a vanity sink out to accommodate her husband.
A school bus company extended its route to pick up and drop off the couple's sons near their new house.
On Jan. 9, the first night Paul Meyer spent with his family after seven weeks in a hospital, he dissolved into tears after he read bedtime stories to his two sons and kissed them goodnight.
"I just bawled like a baby," he said. "I'm happy to be alive and to be sane."
Having been tied to a police pager for callouts of the Special Emergency Reaction Team the last eight years, Meyer said it's a treat to be around when school gets out and his sons, 7-year-old Michael and 10-year-old Russell, come home.
"I'm just trying to soak that up," he said.
His sons, though young, aren't shy about expressing their enormous relief to have their dad back with them.
Before prayers at dinner, Meyer said he struggled to keep his tears in check when he heard his boys "thanking God that he let Dad live."
Meyer often adds that he thanks God that he has his head, his heart and his hands.
Yet getting used to what he calls his "new normal" requires enormous patience.
Seven mornings a week, a nurse visits to help him take a shower and use the bathroom while ensuring he isn't getting bed or pressure sores on his skin from not being able to move. He's paralyzed from the bellybutton down, as he puts it.
Meyer has had to learn how to get dressed. He's figured out how to move a new Tempur-Pedic bed to a 90-degree angle so he can reach his toes to put his socks on. But his compression socks aren't easy to pull up -- they're tight to help avoid swelling in his legs and feet.
Twice a week, his wife drives him to Portland for two-hour physical and occupational therapy sessions. Because he no longer can use his lower back muscles or feet to stabilize his body, Meyer clings with one arm to an armrest and clutches onto the seat with his other so he doesn't go flying when his wife hits the brakes or turns.
Simple tasks take longer and are sometimes impossible.
Meyer can't sit on the family couches. They're too soft and he sinks down too far that he can't get up. He can't reach the top shelf of the refrigerator. When he leans over in his chair, he can't lift himself back up.
His oldest son helps him get into their car and van with a transfer board, a slab of smooth wood placed under him so he can slide out of his wheelchair into the front passenger seat.
"Everything just takes longer now," Meyer said.
"It's a lot more than we thought," Mary Meyer added.
Meyer suffered a slight setback recently, experiencing severe stomach and nerve pain one night, requiring a trip to the emergency room. He's on pain medication to ease the suffering.
All members of the family attend counseling to help them adapt.
It tugged at Meyer's heart on a recent afternoon when his 7-year-old, outside their rental house playing wall ball, complained, "Dad, I don't have anybody to play with here." There are few children in their new neighborhood, a stark change from their familiar cul-de-sac filled with up to 25 kids after school.
"Hey, this is temporary," Paul Meyer has told the boys. "We're going to get back to where we lived."
Mary Meyer has assured them: "We will do all the things we used to. It just may be in a different way."
With a self-described Type A personality, Meyer looks ahead. He's eager to learn to drive once hand-controls are placed in their car. He's anxious to exercise again. His goal: Ride a hand-bike in Portland's 2014 Shamrock Run. He networks with others who live with paralysis to learn how they overcome their limitations.
He's in continual contact with his Police Bureau friends and colleagues, inquiring about the latest police training.
This weekend marks his first time since the accident that he's traveled out of state with his family. They're heading to a family wedding in Seattle.
For the couple's 43rd birthdays in March, their sons convinced them to have dinner out at Red Robin.
When he's having a hard time, Meyer said he tries to consider the big picture, which helps calm him.
"I didn't receive a brain injury. I am who I was before this happened, I just don't have use of my legs," he said.
A few days ago, Paul and Mary Meyer drove up to the now-empty home they own in Tualatin.
Paul Meyer, with his wife's help, eased out of the van's front seat to his wheelchair. He couldn't get in the front door, past the two steps, so he rolled into the garage.
They've found a contractor who has recommended their master bedroom be moved to the first floor and an elevator be installed to allow Meyer access to the boys' upstairs bedrooms. Entry doors must be widened, the kitchen needs altering and carpet replaced with hardwood.
The Portland Fire and Police Disability and Retirement Fund is examining the retrofit plans for "medically necessary accessibility and mobility purposes," said fund director Linda Jefferson. The family is waiting to hear how much the fund will cover and how much they'll have to make up.
Meyer is on disability leave, collecting 75 percent of his base salary. He's eager to return to work, ideally as an officer supervising the police armory, but he's concerned it will bring a 16 percent cut in pay because he'll no longer serve on the tactical squad or get on-call pay.
Meanwhile, their friends have organized a public fundraiser at the downtown Portland Hilton's grand ballroom next month to help make up the gap for the house remodel.
"He's a remarkable man who is facing a life-altering situation with grace and positivity," said friend Karen Schmitt, one of the organizers.
The Meyers are eager to return to their close-knit neighborhood.
"It's very emotional for me to be here. I just want to be home," said Mary Meyer, as she walked through their vacant home. "I feel like it can't happen fast enough."
Paul Meyer hopes the construction can be done and their house ready by summer's end.
He said he wants "to get back to doing the things we've done as a family -- that we planned to do as a family, so we can live life."
Copyright 2013 - The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
