The Single Guy: Advice to Heartsick Don the Widower  

New story concept I'm knocking around. Love and relationship advice columnist who has been divorced, is middle aged, etc. Kind of a romantic comedy. Not sure what I'm going to do with it, probably nothing, but I want to know if the concept works.
Does it?

Dear Single Guy…

My name is Don.
I’m 43.
I’m a widower.
My wife died three years ago.
She was the love of my life, my high school sweetheart.
I’ve fallen off the horse, Single Guy, and I’m afraid to climb back on for another ride.
I have met someone that I really like. She’s a great gal. In fact, I think I might be falling in love with her, but I’m torn, you know? I feel like I’m betraying the memory of my wife, and that love we shared.
We were soul mates. She was truly the other half of my soul.
What do I do, Single Guy?
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. I love my wife, but I’m falling in love here I think. I don’t want to lose her. I can’t imagine spending another day of my life without her.
Sincerely,
Don, the Heart Sick Widower.

Dear Heart Sick…

Then don’t.
We all fall off that horse at one time or another.
The question you have to ask yourself is, do you lie there and wallow in the mud of self-pity and uncertainty, or do you climb back on that horse and enjoy another wild ride?
There are few things worse than losing the one you love. You feel like a part of you – the best part of you died with her.
I am so sorry for your loss.
That said…
Heart Sick, life is not in the destination but the journey, and life is made up of many journeys. Your journey with your wife was a shorter one than you expected. Simply because that particular journey has come to an early end, does not mean you never take another trip.
That is what life is all about, the taking of many journeys.
You say your wife was your soul mate, the other half of your soul.
That’s a noble gesture, and we are all touched by your devotion to her.
But again, that being said, who’s to say we can’t find more than one soul mate in our lifetime? Who’s to say this next love you find isn’t the love of your life? How will you know unless you climb back on that horse?
Don, dust off your heart and hop back the saddle again.
Seize the day.
Reach for that brass ring.
Do not let your life’s greatest regret be that you passed up an opportunity like this.
If you love her, go get her.
Give her everything you have.
It’s okay.
You’re allowed. It’s what your wife would want for you.
To live your life, don’t be a spectator.
Find her.
Now.
Tell her how you feel.
Whatever it takes, go get her.
In the esteemed words of the Lone Ranger, “Hi-ho Silver. Away!”
Go get ‘em Tiger.

Dave “The Single Guy” Merritt

The cursor blinked in that steady monotonous rhythm of “on/off.”
Do you or don’t you?
Do you ever think twice about the advice you dispense Dave?
You sure as hell don’t listen to it.
I call it, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
It’s safer that way.
The arrangement of words, the brush strokes arranged on an artist’s canvas, were good words, sound advice, 676 words including Heart Sick Don’s. My reply averages anywhere from 400 to 550 words depending on the length of the reader’s letter. In this case I wrote 522 words. This I do three days a week, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, rain or shine, including holidays.
A minor trade off that allows me to sit here in my living room, the Braves game on over my right shoulder as I write this, wearing nothing but a wife beater’s T-shirt, black socks and my boxers.
I’m Dave Merritt.
I am The Single Guy.
I’m 51, divorced, and single since then obviously. I have turned that big bowl of life’s lemons into a nice little pitcher of lemonade, a somewhat decent cottage industry.
I click the “Send” button to satisfy the insistent cursor and my laptop responded with the accompanying sound effect of a jetliner taking off. It makes it sound like I live next to the airport instead of in a townhouse a block from the marina. It’s one of the features that come with company email.
The proofs for this week’s cartoon were arranged on a small drafting table set up at a right angle to my work desk. I picked up a medium point Sharpee black pen to start inking in the pencil sketch I’d mapped out of a guy riding a merry-go-round pony and reached for the brass ring in the same of a heart.
Our intrepid horseman wore the familiar white hat and black mask of the Lone Ranger.
Tapping a pencil the pad of paper, I regard my latest “toon” the way most others would an un-flushed toilet.
I see nothing but crap.
As a writer, I pen a damn good column. As an artist I draw a half-assed cartoon. The combination of sound and sometimes-witty romance advice for the lovelorn and a somewhat decently drawn cartoon made for a nice column. The wall above my desk was littered with plaques and framed copies of some Press Association award winning columns.
I’m not a Dr. Ruth.
I’m not a sex therapist.
I simply write a column giving advice from the heart.
I don’t admit or claim to be an expert in the field. I have no degrees on the topic of love.
I’m not even sure at times if I’m all that good at it.
I’m divorced, 51 and single. I’ve already done it all wrong so I guess this is giving an opinion as to how to do it right.
Giving advice evolved over a conversation in a dimly lit bar one night. My drinking buddy was embroiled in this ongoing argument with his girlfriend about his inability to commit. He was terrified of it as most guys are. I took the big plunge, got married and 18 years later my soon-to-be ex-wife socked me one right between the eyes with a ball peen hammer called divorce papers.
I was obtuse to everything.
I thought things were fine.
Okay, the fires of romance had dimmed significantly over the years, but I wrote that off to Mental Pause.
Not good when your wife is sleeping with your attorney.
The biitch.
My attorney, not my ex-wife.
When my wife turned 40 she decided to embrace her true passion, feelings she’d denied for so long.
Yes, my ex-wife defected to the other side.
She and Babs Carmichael, my attorney – not that I ever was in need of an attorney, she was a friend I guess – have been living together for nine of the dozen years since our divorce.
They send me Christmas cards that I use as kindling to start fires in my outdoor fireplace out back.
I have a hard time remembering how and why I started drawing my own cartoons – I do remember the why of it, our editorial cartoonist who took his work a little too seriously and said he just didn’t feel me when I made the pitch about illustrating my Single Guy column (I thought it would add a unique touch). I told him he needed to get over himself, that this wasn’t the Sistine Chapel and he sure as hell wasn’t Michelangelo. He told me if I thought I could do a better job to have at it.
So, I did.
I’ve been drawing my own toons ever since.
I live a Spartan life.
It presents the impression to some that I have a hard time taking care of myself, but that’s not entirely true. I make decent enough money but it’s not money I’m after. I don’t watch much TV, except for the ball game and I spend most of my days and night in quiet and the dark.
Did you know I went 18 months without television?
Decided I didn’t want to pay the ridiculous cable bill each month and just let the TV go. I found out I didn’t miss it. I found out the lack of white noise helped free up the gray matter between my ears and stimulated the imagination.
If I wanted to catch the ball game, I listened on radio.
If I really wanted to see something I picked up the feed online.
I don’t get out much. It’s just me so what’s the point really? I don’t like doing the dinner for one thing at Olive Garden or Outback, the hostesses look at me with this sad expression of sympathetic pity, they feel sorry for me and I’m just so darned cute, but so are stray mongrel dogs and you don’t see anyone taking them home do you?
Everything I need here I keep within arm’s reach.
Style book, dictionary, Thesaurus, flashlight in case power goes out, backscratcher – it really helps loosen tension knots, the baseball from my first win as a pro – Chicago Cubs, July 5, 1976 – nearly my only win in four years of minor league play, an assortment of notepads, napkins from every fast food joint in town, those breathe right strips you Super Glue to your nose, medicine, Advil, Tylenol and Motrin, a salt shaker, the dirty dishes from last night’s dinner, the fast food bags from lunch this week – four of them I count arranged on the floor beneath the small end table that served as a dinner table.
I have two guitars, an Alvarez acoustic and a Fender electric within arm’s reach. Nothing knocks out the gunk of writer’s block than a little Led Zeppelin on guitar.
I like to dress like the firemen, keeping everything I’ve worn for the past three days draped over a chair near the foot of the stairs. My shoes are arranged in a pile in front of the amplifier, Topsiders mostly. I have been known at times to slip my feet into mismatched shoes. It’ll teach me to get dressed in the dark.
I read voraciously and watch movies any chance I get. I don’t rent. I buy. My DVD collection is approaching 600 movie titles but my entertainment center has a capacity for maybe half that. The skyscrapers of books and DVDs look like a miniature city arranged in the corner in front of the television.
The couch is my day bed. I don’t sit; I lie down. I’ll sleep there as often as I do upstairs in my own bed. My bed partner there is another stack of books, the five or six I’m reading at the time. There is a similar stack of books on the floor in front of the couch.
I’m not a slob, a pack rat maybe, but I’m not a slob.
Leaning left and looking through the entryway to the kitchen, evidence may argue contrary to my claims. We won’t go there though.
I’m 51, and I live alone. What else would you expect?
Okay, I