Patton Oswalt Pens Heartbreaking Remembrance of Wife

Patton Oswalt continues the heartbreaking tributes to his late wife with a piece in Time. Michelle Eileen McNamara, who died a week after turning 46, "hasn't left a void. She's left a blast crater," he writes. She was a gifted true-crime writer who also once worked for a young Michelle Obama while she was enjoying life "on the outskirts of the early '90s Chicago music scene." She made impressions on everyone she met: "Cops and comedians call—speechless or sending curt regards," Oswalt writes, calling it "a testament to how she steered her life with joyous, wicked curiosity."

"I loved her," Oswalt writes. "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." He then recounts the story he told on social media over the weekend, about Alice's observation that she is now "the best memory" of her mother. "That's the kind of person Michelle created and helped shape," Oswalt writes. "That was Michelle. That is Michelle. I love her." Click for the full piece. (More Patton Oswalt stories.)