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Steve Taylor is living with his new limitations – paralysis from the waist down. But he also is living large.
The lobsterman who has spent his life on the water in the Washington County community of Cutler is filled with the dream of getting back on the water – even if it’s in a wheelchair.
Taylor, 39, fell on Oct. 19 when he was readying his tree stand for hunting. Initially paralyzed from the neck down, he spent two months recovering and rehabilitating at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.
Last Tuesday, to honking horns of dozens of townsfolk, Taylor and his wife, Hosanna, returned to their home on Cutler Road, their ambulance ushered by the town fire engine. He was humble and emotional.
On Friday, two days before Christmas, he greeted a stream of friends and family members. Clearly glad to be home again, he was upbeat and laughing.
Some approached him for a hug as he lay partly sitting up in his hospital-style bed. Others held back, barely entering the bedroom.
But when his two young sons ran to his bedside, he could not have beamed more brightly.
“I call these two my little heroes,” Taylor said of Rigel, 5, and Gabriel, 3. “I am so very, very, very proud. They saved my life.”
The boys’ running for help for more than five minutes is one of Taylor’s favorite stories about his ordeal and so, too, is the outpouring of generosity from the town of 600 in so many ways.
A benefit supper and auction held 10 days after the accident raised more than $14,000. Donations have continued to come in, including one person’s $5 in an envelope each week the Taylors were at the hospital.
More than 300 cards, many with prayers, dressed up Taylor’s hospital room.
Other lobstermen working out of Cutler Harbor took in Taylor’s traps, then hauled his boat from the water.
Two weeks ago friends from the Cutler United Methodist Church built a deck and ramp at the back of the family’s house.
Family members pitched in and took care of the boys while Hosanna spent nearly every day in the hospital in Bangor.
Hosanna’s brother, whom she hadn’t seen in eight years, came from Chicago to take up the rugs, install hardwood flooring and prepare the house for Taylor’s homecoming. In the two months he was in Cutler, a family reconciliation took place.
All of the assistance has left the family in disbelief.
“This has been nonstop community, and we are just very thankful,” Taylor said. “This is small-town America. That’s what it is.”
On the October day he fell, Taylor had taken the two boys on his four-wheeler to the far side of his wooded property. Where they went – where he wanted to set his tree stand – is a five-minute walk for an adult, but a very long way for youngsters on foot.
He was building a ladder up a tree while the boys played nearby and then stepped on the last rung. That is the last thing he remembers.
The boys ran across the field, over the path and down the hill for help. They expected to find their mother at home – but with the boys in Taylor’s care, she had gone out on an errand.
Rigel left his 3-year-old brother at home and told him to tell his mother what happened. He then returned to his dad, unconscious on the ground.
When Hosanna returned in 10 minutes, Gabriel told her that their father had fallen.
“Is he mad?” she asked. No.
“Is he moving?” No.
“Is he sleeping?” Yes.
Hosanna called Steve’s brother, who lives next door, to call for help. Other neighbors soon learned something was amiss. Andy Patterson, another lobsterman who was in the area, ran to the tree to assist. The ambulance belonging to the former Cutler Naval Base came quickly.
Because the extent of Taylor’s neck injuries weren’t known, the ambulance traveled the 20 miles to Machias at 25 mph.
“That was the longest trip of my life,” Hosanna said.
Shortly afterward, Taylor was transferred to a Bangor hospital to begin two long months of care. Regaining movement in his upper body and arms was a first big step. He still can’t use his fingers and legs.
“You can’t even imagine how it was at the beginning,” he said. “It was so hard.
“I’ve always been the one doing things. I’m the provider. But if you dropped your pencil now, I can’t even lean down to get it. Now I have to ask for everything.
“But we are healing. I’m home.”
Hosanna, whom the hospital nurses trained to provide home care, said she stayed at her husband’s bedside 24 hours a day in Bangor.
“Only 19 or 20 hours a day,” her husband countered. “You went shopping a lot.”
“This is the Christmas season,” she said.
Back in Cutler, meanwhile, Steve’s father, Pete Taylor, cut down the tree with the tree stand.
“He didn’t want anyone else falling out,” Steve Taylor said.
One thing bothers Taylor – the loss of his green couch. He had owned it for years, well before he and Hosanna married six years ago. They had it in the living room.
Hosanna didn’t care for the couch as much as her husband did. On one of the handful of days when she came back to Cutler, the couch went out the door. She knew that some of the house needed to be remodeled to fit a wheelchair. A nicer, newer couch took its place.
“I can’t believe she got rid of it,” Taylor said.
“It didn’t match,” she said.
By Taylor’s bedside is a VHF radio that allows him to hear lobstermen’s banter. Few were on the water Friday, so it was nearly quiet. Taylor loves hearing the sounds that have always been part of his life, including two boys racing around the house.
He started lobstering when he was 13 or 14. He plans to do that again after his muscles and coordination come back. Hosanna will be his sternwoman.
If he has to refit his boat so he can work from a wheelchair, he will.
“I miss the water,” he said. “I love, love, love the water.”
He and Hosanna probably will change the name of his boat – Darksider.
He considered the irony of that and then laughed.
Then he revealed the name he wants for his next boat – Survivor.
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