A writer's new chapter: Journey through grief

'Love you, bye."

Paula Moulton never thought much about the familiar three-word family mantra, flung out in rapid staccato multiple times in a day, until it became not just a hurried cell phone sign-off, but a final farewell.

It was the last thing she said to her husband, Chuck, before he headed off to see patients in Petaluma on a wet Saturday morning in November 2003. He was killed in a car crash and never made it home.

In the 4½ years since that last goodbye, Moulton has been forced to examine a lot of things she took for granted or never considered. Like many other mothers thrust into cataclysmic change by the abrupt loss of a spouse, she had to learn a whole new set of life lessons, chief among them how to help her kids, Ashley, then 16, Chris, 13, and Ali, 10, cope with their grief, each in their own way, all the while summoning her own faith and fortitude to move the family forward.

"So many of us say that phrase offhandedly," said the 48-year-old Moulton -- writer, viticulturist and mother of three -- of those breezy parting words that would have to suffice for a lifetime. "But do we really think about what it means if it's final?"

Dedicated doctor

A beloved orthopedic surgeon so devoted to his patients he was dubbed "Midnight Moulton" for his late-night office hours and rounds during the witching hour, Chuck Moulton struck an oncoming car on a curvy, narrow and rain-slick stretch of Highway 116.

Less than a mile away, his family was waiting for him to join them for a drive to the city to celebrate the publication of Paula's first book, "Seasons Among the Vines: Life Lessons from the California Wine Country."

But his little '83 BMW -- Paula's car from college that the militantly non-materialistic doctor refused to retire because it still ran -- gave no protection. The steering wheel pushed into his body on impact.

By some strange twist of luck amid tragedy, a nurse in a car behind him raced to his side before paramedics arrived and answered the ringing cell phone on the floor of his car. She was able to tell Paula what had just happened, warn her not to bring her kids to the scene and keep her apprised of what rescue crews were doing and where they were taking her husband.

Surgeons at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital pumped into him 20 units of blood, but couldn't stop the internal bleeding.

'How did I get here?'

"I still wake up sometimes and I can't believe where I am," Moulton said, shaking her head while sipping tea with honey on the brick patio of her home in east Sonoma, a pretty place lined with roses and surrounded by boutique vineyards. "How did I get here?"

A day after her husband's death, she found herself in his office holding employees together and trying to manage hundreds of grieving patients, some so frantic that they literally fainted on the floor when they were told Dr. Moulton was dead.

His widow tried for a time to keep the massive one-man practice afloat with the help of other doctors. But Chuck Moulton was not a conventionally organized man. Spurning digital devices, he kept track with sticky notes and his own amazing memory. The complexities were overwhelming. Unable to even sell the practice, she conceded defeat and pulled down the shingle.

Changes for the family

Desperate to simplify and downsize, Moulton sold within six months the 24-acre farm in Glen Ellen that had inspired her book, a lyrical look at life in the Sonoma Wine Country, written in the tradition of Peter Mayle and Frances Mayes. It is equal parts philosophy and science, laced with personal anecdotes, tiny confessions and tips for everything from composting to pruning, maintaining wells to managing wild critters.

She moved her family in the middle of winter to a drafty Victorian house in Sonoma she had bought with Chuck, which was in the throes of a remodel and without heat. She sold the adjoining 34 acres of prime Carneros vineyards to Robledo Winery, letting go of a dream to kick up her efforts to be a serious farmer.

The long-anticipated book, meanwhile, languished unsold and ignored, discovered only by the occasional friend or relative or curious soul who stumbled upon it on Amazon.com.

Chuck Moulton had burst with pride for his wife's accomplishment. He had assembled 200 friends and family for a big publication party over Hog Island oysters at the Moultons' Carneros property. The same group found itself at the same spot two weeks later for his memorial.

"It was this flip-flop from complete joy to complete loss and grief," Moulton recalls. "It was just wacky. I felt like a marble. I was floating around."

A rhetoric major at UC Berkeley who also has an associate's degree in viticulture, Moulton always dreamed of becoming a writer. The book artfully blended both interests along with the experience of mothering three kids in the country.

"When someone dies so suddenly like that, it wreaks havoc on your emotions and what's going on in your brain and your mind. For months I didn't think Chuck was really gone. The brain part understands that he was gone. But the mind part didn't accept it. Sort of like the phantom limb after it's been cut off."

Lessons in grief

Moulton learned to let emotions just happen as they will. And she tried to teach that lesson to her children.

"I did grieve, and I did let them see that," she says.

Ali remembers finding her mother quietly sobbing alone on the back steps beneath some blooming camellia bushes. She just sat down with her.

"We did get through it together, but we didn't all grieve at our worst point at the same time," says Moulton. "So one of us was always able to help the other three."

Ashley, now a 21-year-old neuroscience major at UC San Diego, was an outstanding swimmer but quit the high school team, unable to face the water since it was something she closely shared with her dad. She did wind up coaching and later swam for the San Diego team.

Chris, who is graduating from Sonoma High and heading for UC Santa Cruz, worked out his feelings through The WillMar Center for Bereaved Children, a nonprofit agency in Sonoma that provides support groups and a safe refuge for children grappling with grief. He is now a counselor there, helping other kids make the journey back to equilibrium, and has developed a Web site for them, sharing his own experience.

"What struck me about Paula was her intelligence and her willingness to understand what her children might be going through, that grief for children might be different than adult grief," said Nina Gorbach, a licensed therapist who founded the center. "She was interested in finding whatever resources she could find for them."

Good days and bad days

Ashley said her mom showed her that it's not wrong to have good days and bad days and that eventually the good days outnumber the bad.

"Being able to watch my mom be able to go through the bad days but still be there in the morning awake and alive and doing what she needed to do was proof I could go on with my life and be a capable person who has a future."

Two years ago, Moulton married Gregory Mihran, director of business development for Cisco Systems who has two kids of his own and lives half-time with them in Palo Alto.

Navigating her own hesitation about dating and loving while also walking tenderly around her children's feelings was one of the toughest parts of the journey through grief and back into life, she admits.

She's once again tending her vines -- 1¼ acres of merlot that she will bottle under her own winery label, "Midnight Moulton" in honor of Chuck.

And she's resurrected the book, which was given new life when Random House took over distribution for her publisher and decided "Seasons Among the Vines" would still resonate with readers enamored of the mystique and beauty of living in the California Wine Country.

New book in the works

Over the past few months, Moulton has given a number of radio and newspaper interviews with publications as far away as Canada. That book was about the lessons learned through nature. She's now finishing a proposal on a second book about the lessons learned through loss. The phrase, "Love you, bye" has become the working title.

"Just keep your eyes open," she counsels. "Try new things to keep yourself going. And don't ever necessarily think life stays the same. Change is inevitable, no matter how we try to control it."