Daily Excerpt: Divorced! Survival Techniques for Singles over Forty! - David "Doc" Roberts (Romer)
from Divorced! Survival Techniques for Singles over Forty (Romer)
DAVID “DOC” ROBERTS
“The door is always
open. Every day is a new venture.”
One
of the kindest people I know is a tall, good-looking man who answers to the
name of “Doc” Roberts. Doc has an easy-going way about him that reassures
people, but he’s come by his composure through a long road of struggle. A
veteran of three divorces, 58-year old Doc now focuses his efforts on helping
other people get through life.
His
first marriage lasted only nine months. “I had just gotten out of the service,”
he told me, “and nobody would hire me because of my disabilities [from the
service]. I finally got into selling clothing.”
Doc
said his marriage to Debbie was pretty much based on physical attraction. “We
were just too young,” he explained. “She ended up getting the condo and the
cats. I lost out, but I got a job with DuPont that lasted seven years. I got
the job because of her father.”
He
was 25 when he met his second wife, Pam. “I was employed by DuPont, and
recently divorced,” he said. “She was younger than I was, just 19. She looked
like Stevie Nicks.”
The
couple got married in January of 1981 and soon had their first child, a boy.
Doc was making plenty of money working at DuPont, and so they had a second
baby—another boy.
Then
Doc got laid off from DuPont and everything started going downhill.
“In
November of ’83 I asked my boss, ‘How’s everything going with the company? I
have two boys, getting big.’ I wanted to buy a Dodge Caravan. He assured me
everything was fine, so we bought the car—didn’t buy a house yet, but that was
next.”
Then,
just two months later, in January of 1984, his boss told him that DuPont was
being sold. Doc was slated to be laid off in June.
“Pam
didn’t really understand,” he said. “She had postpartum depression after our
second son’s birth. I took care of everything.”
But
evidently the whole situation was too much for Pam. “I would come home and find
the two boys in a hot room while she was asleep in air-conditioning,” he said.
The
situation came to a head the week after Doc got laid off. “I had been planning
to go to the Harley Reunion at Indian Lookout Mountain in New York for the
weekend,” he said. “I had just been given 15 paychecks—I had $15,000 in my
pocket. I told Pam, ‘When I get back we’re going on the biggest vacation you
ever saw!’”
But
his friend Ronnie was roughed up at the Harley Reunion, and Doc didn’t get home
until three in the morning. “It was quiet as can be,” he told me. “No Pam, no
boys. Everything was still there—I thought she was at her friend Linda’s house,
so I went to Atlantic City and blew $3,000. The rest of the money was at
home.”
When
he got back, the house was still empty. He called Linda, and she told him to
come over.
“I
went over there and she said, ‘Pam took the boys to West Germany.’ I came home
and called the Delaware State Police. I asked, ‘Who do I talk to about an
abduction?’”
Doc
was, naturally, devastated, even more so when he finally got hold of Pam two
days later at her parents’ house in West Germany. “She said, ‘Don’t ever call
this number again.’”
Doc
went into a depression, big time. “I had put her on a pedestal,” he said, “All
I asked was, give my boys mother-love. I had told her she could pick any
career, and I’d send her back to school. I just wanted her to give my children
love.”
“All
I could think was, the gravy train was coming to an end,” he told me, trying to
explain why he thought Pam had left.
A
couple of years later he went to see his father on Father’s Day, and his dad
handed him a large envelope. “I thought it was a Father’s Day card,” Doc said.
“I had been paying child support—not much, but I wasn’t making much. It was
divorce papers.”
“I
had lost my job, lost my wife, lost my kids,” he said.
It
was then that he began to develop his own philosophy for survival. It was a
philosophy that was to grow and develop over the next 30 years, even seeing him
through a third divorce.
“You
have a choice,” he says. “The door is always open. Every day is a new venture.
That’s all my life is, a door.”
He
explained how he’d become so irate, so mad about things that he sometimes
didn’t know what to do, but then he would surrender to his philosophy and
things became simple again. “I call my life, ‘The Doors’,” he said. “You make a
decision. The gun is a door; if you make that decision your life is changed
forever. Go outside and take a walk.”
***********************
In
1993 he met Sally, his third wife. He had started work in a new city at Peck
Construction, a major builder of condominiums. He started as a laborer, digging
footers for a condo. He and Sally got married in 1998 and, soon after, Peck
promoted him to a construction boss. “I did very well,” he said, explaining
that in order to do the job right he had to learn to be hard-nosed. “You
couldn’t be nice and get the job done. I used to wear a little cap with
skeletons on it, the skeletons representing the people who didn’t make it on
the job.”
Soon
he was making good money again, but there were problems. “Sally loved to shop,”
he told me. “Every day when I came home she had a bag of new shoes. Her
favorite words were, ‘They were on sale!’’’
He
started getting her charge card bills in the mail. Sally was working herself,
but charging things on his cards. “I always try and save for a rainy day,” Doc
explained. “I knew there would be a rainy day. I was giving her $1800 a month
and rent was $500. Where was the rest of the money going?”
Doc
said he loved Sally, but he just couldn’t handle it. “I’d seen the struggle my
parents went through with money. I had quit drinking, quit smoking, I was
trying to put money away.”
The
couple had numerous fights: Sally left, came back, left again, came back again.
“We did some interesting things, but it wasn’t enough,” he said. “I was always
working. I started at 4 a.m. All she did was spend money.”
Finally,
Doc asked her to leave. “It was a struggle for power,” he said. At age 50, he
found himself alone.
*************************
“God
came into my life two years ago,” Doc told me. “One morning I happened to watch
Joel Osteen on TV. He talked about appreciating little things. That opened my
eyes. I straightened up my act.”
Accepting
God made Doc see things differently, and he started being grateful for
everything he had. He is retired from Peck and living alone. “I look forward to
getting up in the morning,” he said. “I have no responsibilities except my two
dogs, but they need me.
“I
believe in helping people, something as little as a ride to the doctor’s
office. You reduce the stress of the person when you say, ‘You go in there and
I’ll wait for you.’”
He
finds he is growing more comfortable with his life day by day. He has built a
beautiful garden in his back yard, complete with a fish pond, and he entertains
friends often. “I look forward to seeing what’s outside that ‘door,’” he said,
smiling.
DOC’S
ADVICE FOR THE NEWLY DIVORCED
“Open
the door. Every day is different.”
GUIDELINES
FOR SINGLES OVER 40
1.
Be
grateful for everything you have. Doc said doing this made him see his life
differently.
2.
Try
helping other people to relieve your own anxiety. This works in amazing ways!
3.
Don’t
shut your life down. Stay open to possibilities.
4.
Realize
you have a choice. You can take desperate measures—or you can go outside and
take a walk.
5.
Appreciate
little things—it will help you put your life together.
For more books by Joanna Romer, click HERE.
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