Patton Oswalt Reveals Heartbreaking Information About Himself After Wife Passes Away

Comedian Patton Oswalt has opened up about how his life has been in the days since the death of his wife Michelle McNamara. Oswalt’s 46-year-old wife, was a true-crime writer and passed away on April 22.

Now six months later, the coroner’s office have not stated what McNamara’s cause of death was.

“I have a feeling it might have been an overdose,” Oswalt said in reference to the Xanax his wife took the night before her death. “That’s what the paramedics there were saying while I was screaming and throwing up.”

Since Michelle’s death, Patton says that he has never been less healthy. He struggles to manage his grief on a daily basis. He has gone to counseling, read C.S.Lewis’s A Grief Observed, and reread the part of Stephen King’s On Writing in an effort to combat his crippling sadness, according to The New York Times.

The 47-year-old comedian also admits that he tried turning to drinking to suppress the pain. “I found out the hard way these past few months that alcohol really doesn’t help,” Oswalt said.

In the past, Oswalt has suffered from depression. However the loss of his wife has put him into a far worse place than ever before.

“Depression is more seductive,” he said. “Its tool is: ‘Wouldn’t it be way more comfortable to stay inside and not deal with people?’ Grief is an attack on life. It’s not a seducer. It’s an ambush or worse. It stands right out there and says: ‘The minute you try something, I’m waiting for you.’”

One thing that has been therapeutic for Oswalt is to return to stand-up comedy. He began working on a new batch of jokes last month that he is set to perform on November 3 at the New York Comedy Festival. Taking the stage was “a rebuke to grief, an acceptance of the messiness of life,” he said.

“I’ll never be at 100 percent again, but that won’t stop me from living this,” Oswalt said.

Other than stand-up comedy, Oswalt is most known for his roles on The King of Queens, The Goldbergs, Ratatouille, and Young Adult. He has also authored two best selling books.

Oswalt and McNamara have a 7-year-old child together named Alice. Since McNamara’s death, Patton Oswalt and his daughter have committed to writing down three things that they remember about her.

“It keeps this living portrait of her,” Oswalt said.

Oswalt has committed himself to finishing the book that his wife was in the middle of writing that attempts to solve a murder. “We can finish the book, but it was tangential to the work, which was: She was going to solve this crime,” he said. “She didn’t want credit for it. She wanted him to be locked up. She was close to figuring it out. It would give her bad nightmares.”

“In comic-book terms,” Oswalt said. “I was married to a great crime fighter.”

We wish Patton Oswalt all the best in this difficult time in the wake of his wife’s tragic passing.

[H/T The New York Times]