Patton Oswalt Writes A Eulogy For His Late Wife, Michelle McNamara
"She hasn't left a void. She's left a blast crater."
Photo by Jamie McCarthy/GettyPatton Oswalt’s wife, writer Michelle McNamara, died two weeks ago in her sleep at age 46. It was the latest piece of tragic news in a year that seems full of it, and it came in the immediate aftermath of Oswalt’s latest Netflix special, Talking For Clapping. Today, in Time, Oswalt wrote a eulogy for McNamara, and it’s as sad and beautiful as you’d expect. Read an excerpt below, and go here for the full piece.
I loved her. This is the first time I’ve been able to use “I” writing this. Probably because there hasn’t been much of an “I” since the morning of April 21. There probably won’t be for a while. Whatever there is belongs to my daughter — to our daughter. Alice.
Five days after Michelle was gone, Alice and I were half-awake at dawn, after a night of half-sleeping. Alice sat up in bed. Her face was silhouetted in the dawn light of the bedroom windows. I couldn’t see her expression. I just heard her voice: “When your mom dies you’re the best memory of her. Everything you do and say is a memory of her.”
That’s the kind of person Michelle created and helped shape.
That was Michelle. That is Michelle.
I love her.