Few members of the Hollywood landscape have become more prominent and popular among film and television geeks than Patton Oswalt. The stand-up comedian's work has become widely praised for its enthusiasm as well as its depth, and his recent personal struggles have garnered the attention and sympathy of fans all over the world. Oswalt's wife Michelle McNamara tragically passed away last April (one of the many untimely celebrity deaths of 2016), and authorities has finally revealed that her death was the result of a reaction from a combination of drugs in her system.
A recent report from Variety confirms that Michelle McNamara passed away due to a reaction between the drugs Adderall, Xanax, and Fentanyl. The combination of these medications in her system resulted in a blockage caused by an undiagnosed heart condition, and she passed away in her sleep on April 21, 2016. McNamara had just turned 46 years old the week before her death.
Before her death, Michelle McNamara had developed her own level of fame due to her work as a crime writer. She ran the website TrueCrimeDiary, and she spent much of her time over the last decade covering breaking news and going over cold cases within the true crime genre. Her death had a very profound impact on Patton Oswalt, and the widower has spent much of the last year publicly coping with her loss -- Oswalt has even gone so far as to say that he will never be "100%" again after her passing. Oswalt has built a career off of his willingness to be open about his own personal struggles and experiences over the course of his 48 years of his life, and his public mourning of his late wife has in many ways become a communal process that his fans have passionately joined in on.
In addition to her comedian husband, Michelle McNamara is survived by her daughter Alice. In an obituary that Patton Oswalt wrote for last May, the devastated actor described the process of breaking the news to his daughter and coping with the loss together. He wrote:
Five days after Michelle was gone, Alice and I were half-awake at dawn, after a night of half-sleeping. Alice sat up in bed. Her face was silhouetted in the dawn light of the bedroom windows. I couldn't see her expression. I just heard her voice: 'When your mom dies you're the best memory of her. Everything you do and say is a memory of her.'
We have fun here at CinemaBlend, but even I have to admit that's a pretty sobering experience.
CinemaBlend will bring you more information concerning this situation as more details about the tragic and untimely passing of Michelle McNamara become available to us. As for the rest of the Oswalt family, all of us here at CinemaBlend would simply like to extend our deepest sympathies and support in this difficult time.
