Nine-year-old Caleb bounced around the house and hammed it up for a photographer’s camera while mom Tresa tried to get him to cooperate and dad Simonn cracked jokes about the sorry state of country music.
It was a fairly typical family scene at the Marshes’ house in east Vancouver last week for a family that’s been learning to redefine typical since Simonn Marsh, 35, was paralyzed in a fishing accident 10 years ago.
Simonn was fishing with friends July 22, 2006, in the North Fork of the Lewis River, when the top section of a falling 75- to 100-foot spruce struck him, paralyzing him from about the chest down.
The part of the tree that hit him was about 10 inches in diameter, and it left him with a head injury, a collapsed lung, multiple fractures to his ribs, shoulder, neck and thighs, and other injuries.
He now gets around with a power chair, and an auto shop-like crane and pulley system in his bedroom helps him get in and out of bed. Simonn, about 6-foot-2, weighed about 300 pounds the day of the accident, but weighs about 190 now.
“To be honest, I cannot feel much of anything,” Simonn said. “I feel everything from my chest up, so what I can feel feels great.”
Simon does daily arm exercises, and Tresa, 35, said a caretaker comes by every weekday and makes short visits on weekends. Most mornings, “I go for a walk in the morning, then in the afternoon I will lay down and take a nap,” Simonn said.
“My life is kinda boring, but that’s OK,” he said.
Tresa said Simonn can’t remember about a year of what happened around the time of the accident. Caleb was an infant when it happened, and Simonn doesn’t remember Tresa being pregnant.
Caleb doesn’t remember a time when his father walked.
A new normal
Initially, how affected Simonn’s other faculties would be was unclear, Tresa said.
After the accident, Simonn couldn’t speak for some time. Although it’s a somewhat slow and deliberate-sounding monotone now, it’s improved substantially, Tresa said.
After the accident, the School for the Blind provided Simonn with a reader device, which projects and zooms a printed page onto a screen for easier reading. When he first got it, Simonn had to zoom in so far the lower-case letters were about an inch tall on the screen. Now they’re about half that size.
“He always reads the fishing report, like, faithfully,” Tresa said.
Simonn was a passionate outdoorsman, but his reduced hand-eye coordination and the logistics involved in getting him around have put a damper on that, one of his brothers, Solomonn Marsh, said.
Simonn comes from a large family. Solomonn — the six Marsh siblings share double-N names — said it was fear of the unknown, more than anything, that was toughest on the extended family in those early days.
Solomonn said he remembered late-night choking scares that sent Simonn to the hospital.
“Initially, it brought everybody closer together,” Solomonn said. “When everybody realized the magnitude of what had happened.”
The rest of the family has largely gotten used to planning family gatherings so Simonn can be involved without too much trouble, Solomonn said.
“It was hard to adapt to his quality of life, as far as being able to go do things with him like we used to do,” Solomonn said.
On Sundays after church, the three will visit Simonn’s mom at her house in Battle Ground, which he wired when he worked as an electrician before getting hurt.
He makes occasional restaurant trips, too, and has been able to get out for some outdoor activities. He’s looking forward to watching Caleb’s flag football league.
‘Determined … family’
Tresa splits time between working at Costco and her classes at Clark College. She hopes to attend Washington State University Vancouver and become a teacher. Longer-term, she said, she’d like to find a training program for Simonn, so he can find some work, too.
Tresa said she holds on to hope that Simonn may walk again. She’s heard of cutting-edge research to help people with nerve and spinal cord damage.
“Someday, he will,” she said. “I have faith in that with God, all things are possible.”
Tresa also has grown into an avid runner. She’s training for another marathon and runs for Clark College.
“I think that’s her outlet. That’s the way Tresa gets away from, just, the pressure,” said Dave Schaaf, a pastor at City Harvest Church, where the Marshes attend.
They’re often in the front row at services and helping out with church events, he said.
“They are just determined to be a family, just like so many others that experience some kind of real, life-changing kind of thing,” Schaaf said.
Watching your husband get hurt, working through his injuries, raising a boy with a lot less hands-on help, having a stranger in the house daily taking care of your spouse — “it’s been incredibly difficult” for Tresa, Solomonn said.
“And there’s times when you’re just in awe that someone could withstand that and still be around,” he said. “It’s been amazing to see how she handles everything.”
‘A miracle’
Simonn said he attributes his good fortune to Christ. He said when he awoke in a convalescent center after the accident, he asked a nurse where he was and what happened.
“The nurse said, ‘Well, a tree fell on you, and it’s a miracle that I’m talking to you right now,’ ” he said.
He asked why she called it a miracle, and she told him his heart stopped as doctors worked to patch him up.
“So I decided right then never ever to complain,” he said.
He’s a Christian, he said, adding that while bad things happen, he takes comfort in believing God’s plan for him will lead to good things.
“He doesn’t have any magical thinking that something is just going to happen, but he believes God is a healer, and it certainly can happen,” Schaaf said. “That kind of faith is something that obviously is rare, but I am always amazed how he maintains that position and very rarely gets discouraged.”
That Simonn has kept such a good outlook is what surprises his brother the most.
“It’s so hard to put yourself in those shoes,” Solomonn said. “I can only imagine. … I would just be doom and gloom.”
Solomonn said his brother does feel down at times. He recalled conversations where Simonn made reference to how tough it is to be in a wheelchair with a son as rambunctious as Caleb.
“Overall, it’s definitely a positive outlook,” Solomon said. “He does definitely have down days, but it doesn’t last long. He’s always finding something to look forward, too.”
