Patton Oswalt continues to mourn the death of his wife, Michelle McNamara, who passed away suddenly in April at age 46, and is opening up about becoming a single parent in a new essay for GQ.
Veering from heart-wrenching to gut-busting, the comedian describes the struggles of raising the couple’s seven-year-old daughter, Alice, solo.
“I work a creative job, but I live a practical life,” he writes. “If I can persuade a comedy club full of indifferent drunks to like me, I can have my daughter ready for soccer on a Saturday morning.”
The sense of loss he feels has not diminished in the months that have passed since McNamara died in her sleep seven months ago.
“It feels like a walk-on character is being asked to carry an epic film after the star has been wiped from the screen,” he explains. “Imagine Frances McDormand dying in the first act of ‘Fargo’ and her dim-bulb patrol partner — the one who can’t recognize dealer plates — has to bring William H. Macy to justice.”
He also opens up about his insecurities, as his late wife was the glue that held their family life together. “I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t do it,” he writes. “I want to tune out the world and hide under the covers and never leave my house again and send our daughter, Alice, off to live with her cousins in Chicago, because they won’t screw her up the way I know I will. Somebody help me! I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
In fact, he admits the day-to-day domestic duties that McNamara performed so effortlessly continue to elude him. “This is my first time being a single father. I’ve missed forms for school,” he writes. “I’ve forgotten to stock the fridge with food she likes. I’ve run out of socks for her. I’ve run out of socks for me. It sucked and it was a hassle every time, but the world kept turning. I said, ‘Whoops, my bad,’ and fixed it and kept stumbling forward.”
He adds: “I’m going to keep going forward, looking stupid and clumsy and inexperienced at first, then eventually getting it, until the next jolt comes, and the next floor drops out from under me, until there are no more floors.”
