One year ago, Patton Oswalt lost his wife. Michelle McNamara, beloved wife to Patton and beloved mother to their daughter Alice. She passed away suddenly.
Over the next year, Patton’s fan mourned alongside him as he made his recovery and grief very public. On Friday, Oswalt posted about the '1 year' anniversary of his wife’s passing and walked his fans through that terrible day.
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“I came back from dropping Alice off at school. I’d let Michelle sleep in. Got our daughter dressed and ready for school — lunch packed, class folder in her backpack. I stopped on the way home to buy Michelle an Americano and left it on her bedside table around 9:30 a.m.,” Oswalt writes. “Went up to my office, did some writing, answered some e-mails, Tweeted some thoughts on Prince dying.”
Oswalt and his wife were supposed to go to an art show at their daughter’s school that evening. Oswalt joked about how they had expected to get dragged around the school as his daughter explained her artwork.
“Except instead I came back down into the house and the life I knew was gone,” Patton said.
In later passages, Oswalt goes into explicit detail about where he is one year after his wife’s death.
“Michelle brought me nothing but happiness. You see it in our faces, that picture between the two pics of the box. That was taken literally a month after we started going out. Look at us. We knew this was it.”
Oswalt details that he placed his wedding ring in a box of keepsakes, with other mementos from his marriage.
At the end of his must-read missive, Oswalt preps for what comes next.
“I plan things better. I’m more patient. I still sleep badly, and my weight and health need some work, but that’s combat damage. There’s got to be a way to fix those without being shitty to friends and strangers who are struggling with chaos. I’ll try,” Oswalt writes.
“One year in. Another year starting. It’s awful, but it’s not fatal. Message received? Over and out.”
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