One year ago today Michelle McNamar passed away in her sleep at the age of 46.
McNamara was an accomplished true crime writer, but was probably best known to the general public as the wife of beloved comedian Patton Oswalt.
Today, Oswalt marked the anniversary of his wife’s passing in simple, but profound fashion.
Oswalt tweeted to photos of McNamara this morning.
He captioned the images:
“A beautiful friend … She opened up her heart and let me in…”
In the months since McNamara’s death, Oswalt has been open the grieving process as well as the challenged of raising an 8-year-old daughter on his own.
McNamara’s unexpected passing appears to have been the result of an accidental overdose caused by low doses of multiple medications that interacted and exacerbated a pre-existing condition.
“We learned today the combination of drugs in Michelle’s system, along with a condition we were unaware of, proved lethal,” Oswalt said back in February.
Medical examiners reported that McNamara had Xanax, Adderall and the potent prescription painkiller Fentanyl in her system at the time of her death.
In a tragic coincidence, her death came on the same day that Prince suffered a fatal overdose on Fentanyl, a drug that’s responsible for much of America’s worsening opioid epidemic.
In the months of her life, McNamara was hard at work on a book about a murderer she dubbed “the Golden State Killer.”
McNamara’s unfinished work wills serve as the basis for a 48 Hours special about the killer, set to air on Saturday night.
“She had a mind for the details of true crime the way other people have for baseball or me for films,” Oswalt says, in discussing his wife’s work with the show.
“She could recall the details of pretty much every late 20th and 21st century crime. It was just in her head.”
After a several-month hiatus, Oswalt recently returned to acting and standup.
He’s currently on tour and can be seen in new episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Netflix.
We’ve always been fans of Patton’s comedy, and now we’re in total admiration of his strength, as well.
