Patton Oswalt Learns to Laugh Again

Cold Open

About halfway through his 2017 Netflix comedy special, Annihilation, Patton Oswalt ventured into territory that's not generally part of stand-up comedy routines.

Patton on Netflix: Just over a year ago, um, I became a widower and, uh, I have, I'm moving along as best I can. It is, you know, I'm, I can get up and I can do my job, I can be a dad, but, uh, it's not, you know, it, it's, it's still the wound is there.

Patton’s been doing stand-up for more than 30 years. He’s also a writer and actor. But when his wife, Michelle McNamara, suddenly died on April 21, 2016, all of that came, briefly, to a stop.

Patton: I mean, I didn't go on stage for like four months after she passed away. And, and when I first started going on stage, it was really, really rough. I, I didn't know how to address it. There were some nights that I would only talk about it, and it was very uncomfortable. There were other nights I wouldn't mention it at all, and that felt weird. The audience was like, does he not - like you gotta. So I found over the months and, and days of going on stage over and over again, I found a way. A balance of how to get into it.

Patton says the day his wife died was the second worst day of his life. The worst was the day after, when he had to break the news to their daughter, Alice, who had just turned seven.

Shoshana: Tell me more about that.

Patton: Uh, I can only say so much about this. Unfortunately, it was, it's something that it's very hard for me to talk about. 'cause, you know, I basically, you know, dropped an a-bomb on my daughter's life, but it was, you know, just very simply sat her down, explained to her what happened, and then, you know, she, uh, just kind of fell apart and I fell apart.

In the years since Michelle’s death, Patton has often said that the responsibilities of

being a dad saved him from drowning in his grief.

Patton: It was another option taken away from me, like in a, in a good way. It was another like, well, no, I can't drink myself into oblivion. It was like, I've got to get up. I've gotta make breakfast, I gotta have her clothes. I got like, in a way, it was a weird freeing thing. I don't have time to marinate in this grief because of all the other stuff I have to do.

Patton: The ground's been cut away beneath you, and in a weird way, it's freeing. You don't have a choice. You can do nothing but respond. And it is a, it is a terrible, terrible form of freedom to have.

Shoshana: How did you get through that spring and that summer?

Patton: I got some really good advice from another parent at the school who had a spouse die, who basically said right now – and this is the advice I give to everyone else who asks me, like, who goes through something like this – and it's like, right now, all you have to do is exist and don't judge yourself from merely existing. You need to wake up in the morning. You need to go to bed at night, and during the day, you need to get your daughter fed, get her to school, take care of things, pay bills, and you just need to merely exist. And you're gonna feel all grief and terror. And then you'll get to a point where you don't feel anything, which will feel like a relief. And you'll go, oh, I'll just exist here. I'll exist to where I feel nothing. Um, and then, in spite of yourself and, and kind of to your own surprise, you'll start to experience emotions again, and you will experience joy again. You know, that will come for you. And be ready when it comes. 'cause a lot of times you'll run from it. You should run towards it. So I just existed and then let everything else follow. And if that sounds like kind of general and dismissive, it's because again, it's how I remember it. It was my brain shutting down and becoming like aggressively functional.

Shoshana: No, it doesn't sound dismissive at all. You know? I think that absolutely makes sense, and I think it's super common for a lot of people. (Yeah, yeah, yeah.) I, I've heard you say that you were trying to protect Alice, but the problem with that was you didn't show her your grief. What, what did you mean

Patton: Well, I just didn't, she'd already had one parent ripped away from her and us. I wanted her to feel like there was safety and assurance in the world. And I didn't want her to see me breaking down and freaking out. In my mind, that would be a version of her losing both parents. So I think maybe I covered up a little too much, but only because, you know, I did a lot of my crying and grieving in private. And also, you know, and anyone who, who loses, um, a loved one will tell you sometimes the crying comes and the grief comes out of nowhere. Like you can be. Driving along or walking along and it will hit you. And there's nothing there to trigger it. It's not like you hear a song that you guys both loved or you're suddenly down the street that you guys walk down a lot. (Right) For no reason. It'll just hit you and there's nothing you can do about it. So I've tried to keep those moments few and far between for Alice to see. 'Cause I just, you know, I wanted to have her feel safety and assurance.

Navigating grief and loss becomes even more complicated when there’s a child involved. And parents like Patton are often worried that their children will never fully recover from the loss. But experts want us to know that most bereaved children go on to lead happy, healthy lives.

I’m Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider and this is Before We Go. This season, we’re in conversation with people from all walks of life, exploring how we live alongside mortality. Today’s episode: Patton Oswalt Learns to Laugh Again.

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Act I

Shoshana: Can you share a happy memory of what your life was like when it was you, Michelle and Alice?

Patton: I mean, what's amazing is the happy memories aren't any specific event. It's just this overall. vibe of getting up in the morning and making her breakfast and either taking her to school or if it's not a school day, it's we're gonna park in an area that's really fun to walk around and and go look at stuff. Letting. Our daughter lead the way for the day and go where she takes us, which was really, really fun. So that was like, you know, we were able to stack up a lot of days like that and that that is like one of those overall memories. You remember the mood and the vibe rather than a specific event.

Patton’s wife, Michelle, came to LA with the hopes of becoming a writer for TV and film.

Patton: In trying to write for TV and films, she kind of fell into the whole true crime world. She'd always been, you know, fascinated with true crime. But that she really got into the, oh wait a minute. There seems to be this emerging thing where you can use the internet and social media can track stuff down.

Patton says he and Michelle worked as a team. As two busy parents, they would often take turns getting their daughter Alice up and off to school.

Patton: You know, there were days where she's like, I'm – I'll get up early. You sleep. I know you've been busting your ass these last few days.

But in the weeks and months before her death, Michelle had been staying up late, working hard on her book. And so the night before her death, Patton said to her…

Patton: It's your turn to be able to sleep in and just relax. I'm getting up early. I'm making the breakfast. I'm taking Alice to school. And then when I came home, I remember I brought her, I stopped on the way home and got her an Americano. She loved the Americanos from Starbucks. So I would – I went in and it felt like she was still sleeping when I went and I put it next to her bed that she could wake up. I had the little plastic green thing in it to keep it hot. And then went back to my office to write for a few hours and like. I really wanted her to sleep until she woke up like that. You know, those days when you get to sleep until you wake up, there's no alarms, no where you need to be, which is a big deal. And then I went back into the house, uh, around, I think it was just before noon, um, and I was like, Hey, let's maybe go get lunch. And I – that's when I discovered she had passed. And it was pretty, from that point on, it was just a nightmare.

As a doctor, I’ve done a lot of work around death and dying. And when my father died at home, our family had nine months to prepare. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for Patton to walk into that room and discover that his wife had died.

Shoshana: In that moment when you found Michelle, how did you figure out what to do next?

Patton: I don't know what's better or what's worse 'cause I haven't experienced what you experienced. But you know, with mine it was a complete – a complete tearing away in the middle of what felt like the most normal day. I already had an expectation in my mind of like, oh, the rest of the day we will go like this and maybe we'll get lunch. Maybe we'll go pick her up together and go do something. And then suddenly all of that is. Ripped away. And I gotta say it was one of those I, I've heard described a lot of times when people like experience massive pain, like on a physical level, a lot of times their brain just doesn't process it as a way to keep them from panicking. So as much of the terror and loss as I felt there was this weird, I guess it was the adrenaline, like, you've got to think of Alice it was just all like, my mind just went right to Alice and like, how do I protect her? What do I do now? How do I make sure that she's okay? So that's, that's just if I'm gonna be totally honest, that's right where my brain went.

Shoshana: Of course that makes a lot of sense. We, we sort of just move into like response mode and sort of shut down Yes. thinking about, you know, otherwise you can't just, you can't take in everything going on in, in, in a, in a traumatic moment. I, I imagine like that. and I know you said a friend gave you a copy of the book, A Grief Observed by CS Lewis.

Patton: Yeah. CS Lewis, A Grief Observed. It's right up there on my shelf.

Shoshana: And the first line is, no one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear. Is that what grief felt like?

Patton: Absolutely. It felt like complete terror. 'cause the world didn't make any sense anymore. This, this person that like this brilliant, vibrant person isn't here. How is that possible? It, it didn't make any sense.

Alice was at school when Patton discovered that Michelle had died. Patton called and told the school principal what was going on. And the principal had some advice on how to tell Alice that her mother was gone.

Patton: She said, tell her in the sunshine. Don't tell her at the end of the day and go, and now you have to go to sleep. Like now it's nighttime. So keep it as normal as you can, and then wait until the sun is high as in the sky. So she has as much daylight as possible to process it.

Patton took the principal’s advice. He picked up Alice at school and took her to a hotel. Which, he says, was something he would do from time to time.

Patton: 'Cause Michelle was working on this book. There were days where she's like, I just need the house to myself so I can just write. And I'm like, oh, I'll take uh, Alice on a little adventure. We'll go up to Portland or we go to Seattle, or we go to Austin or we just have a little fun adventure in town. So I was like, oh, okay. I'll pick her from school and go, Hey, surprise, we're gonna check in a hotel and tomorrow we're gonna have a daddy daughter day, no school. And then also during that time, I was scrambling on the phone. I flew out all of Michelle's family. I put them in a hotel room next to ours. Our daughter didn't see them so that I could surprise them the next day, like once I told her how horrible it was, then I walked her down to that room and said, but you're not gonna go through this alone. And then they were all waiting there for her. So she had this like, you know, this warm, loving, you know, group there to receive her and help her.

Shoshana: How did you even have the foresight to do all of this?

Patton: It wasn't foresight. It was panic. It was absolute adrenaline and panic, and it was almost that thing where, like I said earlier, the pain was so massive that my brain was almost like, we're not gonna process all of this right now so that you can do the other stuff that you need to do.

Shoshana: So much of what you're saying resonates with me, when my dad was sick and then when he died, I was so in, just like, we gotta figure out, you know, next steps mode and

Patton: Yeah. You get into weird crisis and survival mode. I don't think I slept for like four days and it wasn't until Alice went back to school and she wanted very much to go back to school that Monday, which was another thing I was told, let them take the lead on this. They'll tell you what they need. They're like, I don't wanna go to school for a month. They don't go to school for month. And then she clearly wanted as much normalcy back as she could. So I took her to school that morning and dropped her off. And then I parked down the street and just sat in my car and then I just immediately kind of collapsed and it was like this weird combination of like crying myself to sleep while sitting in a car. And then I had the alarm set for the, the time when school let out. So then it went off on my phone, and then I kind of put myself together and walked back up to the school and picked her up and took her home.

This was Patton's life for the next few weeks -- until school let out for the summer. Get up, take Alice to school, sit in the car and cry until school lets out, and then get back to the business of taking care of Alice's needs.

Shoshana: Patton, how did you explain death to Alice? Or did you?

Patton: Um, well, you know, she was six, so she was able to kind of grasp it. Some friends loaned me some books, you know, where do we go when we die? There's one, like with dinosaurs explaining it. And then we also went to a grief group every week. She went to a, a child's grief group that really, really helped. It was just a, a moment to moment process and, and any questions that she had, I was just there to answer them, you know?

Julie: That is what is the most helpful for kids, is to feel like this person can handle what I'm saying to them. And I can ask any question I want, and I'm not gonna feel punished or shut down because of it.

That’s Julie Kaplow. She’s a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in

helping children cope with grief and trauma.

I wanted to talk with Julie because a child losing a parent or a loved one is way more common than many of us realize.

Julie: One in 12 kids will lose a parent or a sibling before they turn 18.

Shoshana: Wow. That's a lot. That's surprising. So what do you wish that more people understood about childhood grief?

Julie: I think the main thing that is sort of a common misperception is that there is somehow a right way versus a wrong way to grieve and really any way that a child is grieving is okay. And so even within the same family, we can have two siblings that are grieving very differently. One who really wants to engage and talk about it and look at pictures of the person who died and reminisce about them and the other who really doesn't want to do that, who would prefer to just sort of grieve in their own private way. And so recognizing that really there, again, there's no right or wrong way, and there may not be sort of a one size fits all way of coping for the whole family.

Julie: I also want people to recognize that the vast majority of kids who experience the death of a loved one will go on to lead healthy, happy, productive lives. This is not sort of a life sentence. Kids can still thrive in the face of that kind of adversity. What that doesn't mean though is that the grief is going to somehow go away. And the bottom line is that grief is a natural reflection of the love we had for the person who died, and so we wouldn't expect it to go away. So when we're working with kids around grief, it's really not about removing the grief, it's about providing them with the coping skills and tools needed to grapple with it as it comes and goes.

Shoshana: Yeah, those insights are so valuable. I, I think many adults feel completely at a loss. I know I have in these situations, and many of us struggle with what to say to a grieving adult. It seems even more fraught when it's a child. Do you have any advice?

Julie: Absolutely. And I think that that's probably one of the biggest barriers to getting children the support they need is that as caring adults, we're worried about, you know, if I mention it is go, is it going to bring up all these upsetting feelings for the child? Maybe it's better if I don't say anything at all. And really, when we don't say anything, it's sending the message that it's not okay to talk about this. Or that it's too overwhelming or too scary. And what we want kids to feel is that they can talk about it whenever they need to. And really what we tell parents or caregivers, especially of those who are grieving, is that the most important thing they can do is literally to bear witness to their child's pain.

And I should mention that the advice Patton Oswalt got from his daughter’s school principal – to wait until the sun was high in the sky before telling Alice about her mother’s death – that isn’t the advice Julie gives to the parents she works with. Julie doesn’t recommend delaying telling the child what has happened.

Julie: What we've learned over time is that kids know what they're not supposed to know. So whenever we're grappling with, you know, keeping things from our kids, we always have to consider the fact that they may know something. They may know something is wrong. And when there's that silence around that something, it makes it even scarier for kids that we're not even gonna go there. We're not gonna approach it because it's too much. Really what we know is the more honest and open and truthful we can be with kids, the better off they are over time.

Shoshana: Hmm. Yeah, the timing consideration is really fascinating. I, I also think, and, and you tell me if there's something in the literature or, you know, in terms of your experience with this, is that the principal was also trying to avoid having Alice associate the night nighttime with death potentially. Is that, is that a thing?

Julie: You know, kids do develop what we call loss reminders or trauma reminders, depending on the circumstances of the death. So there's, there's a reality to that. I also think that there are ways that we can empower kids to deal with those very effectively. So what we found is that when we can help make those linkages, it takes away the power of those reminders. That it doesn't have to be so scary. Oh, I'm remembering about my dad now because I, I heard that noise, or whatever it is. They can start to associate it and recognize that their reaction is not crazy. It's just simply they're being reminded and their body is reacting in a very natural way to that.

You’re listening to Before We Go. We’ll be right back.

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Act II

Shoshana: So after Patton told his daughter about her mother's death, he walked her into a hotel room full of family members. So aunts, uncles, cousins who were all there to support her. How important is an extended support system for a kid who's dealing with grief?

Julie: I think it's critically important. And in fact, we've found that the more social support that a child has after a death, the better off they'll be and the more effectively they can cope. I also think it can be very validating for kids to see other people grieving in natural ways. I think sometimes as adults we're worried, you know, should I not let them see me cry? Or are they gonna become more upset if I'm upset? And what we've learned is that kids sort of model their grief after adults in their lives and in recognizing that it's okay to cry, it's okay to be upset for the next 20 minutes. I can still function in life. You know, really seeing those models of sort of normalizing what it means to grieve, I think is actually really, and a really important part of that social support.

Patton mentioned that he sometimes worried he kept too much of his grief from Alice. And Julie says, that’s a real concern.

Julie: In general, what we're finding is that the more the parent can be open and honest about how they're feeling and literally saying, you know, I'm feeling really sad right now 'cause we're sitting at the table and mom should be here and she's not. And it's making me sad. That is such an amazing model for recognizing that it's okay to feel this way, and chances are the child is also feeling that. And so it's validating for them to hear, I'm not alone in this.

Shoshana: Yeah. You know when, when my dad died a couple of years ago, I don't have children, but, but I'm very close with my niece and nephew. And it's really cool. I've learned a lot about grief from them. And they're nine and 11, and when, when he died, they were like, seven and nine. My nephew draws pictures of helicopters and makes these little altars in his room that remember my dad, who was an amateur helicopter pilot and Mackenzie, my niece, writes songs about my dad. And I'm just totally blown away by how connected they remain to him and, and to all these feelings. It's really, it's really beautiful.

Julie: Yeah. And you know, that's something else we've observed is that kids can grieve in very adaptive ways that are incredibly meaningful. We've found that kids, um, sometimes want to transform the circumstances of the death into something that can help other people to not have to suffer in the same way. So the helicopter story reminded me of a little boy who I treated, whose father died in a tragic plane crash. And when I asked him. What do you wanna be when you grow up? He said, I wanna be an engineer so I can make planes that don't break anymore. And you know, we hear this all the time from kids. I wanna be an ER doctor so that I can save lives the way I wish they had saved my brother. Or I wanna raise money for breast cancer because mom died of breast cancer. And so, you know, kids really do sort of naturally gravitate toward wanting to make meaning of the loss and doing things that can, can actually help other people not have to suffer in that way.

But there’s one more thing Julie wanted to make sure people know about helping children through grief. And that is that it’s okay if you need to help yourself through it first.

Julie: If parents are struggling with their own grief, the best thing they can do to help their child is to help themselves. So it's kind of like putting your own oxygen mask on first, recognizing that, you may have some internal work to do before you're able to be fully present for your child in that situation and giving parents some grace that they might need their own space and time to be able to really process their grief before they're able to help their child.

It’s been nine years since Michelle’s death, and Patton Oswalt and his daughter Alice are doing well.

Patton: Alice is a teenager now, with all the good and bad that that comes with.

But Patton isn’t raising her alone anymore.

Shoshana: That person who told you that you would feel joy again, also I think said you would fall in love. What did, what did you make of the idea that you would fall in love again?

Patton: I just, I was very polite when he said that went, okay, . Like, I didn't even believe the joy thing. So, I just was like, fine, let me just get to the point where I can feel nothing. That would be paradise for me right now. And then just like he called it, I fell in love again.

Patton married Meredith Salenger in November of 2017. A year and a half after Michelle’s death.

Shoshana: How did you meet Meredith?

Patton: Meredith and I have a lot of friends in common. And she has a friend named Martha Plimpton, an actress, who – they've known each other since they were kids. They were both child actors. So Martha would have these salons where she would have friends over from different walks of life and make dinner and people would meet. So I was invited to one that also, Meredith was on the same invite list. And then at the last minute I couldn't go, for some reason I was traveling or something. And then Meredith was like, dude, you missed the best fucking lasagna, like something like that. This is all on Facebook. And I just wrote a message back on ah, story of my life. I was not being flirtatious, I was just like, started typing back and forth and it turned into like, oh, that’s yet another thing I miss about Michelle was having someone to talk to in the dark at the end of the day. So every night around nine, once Alice was asleep, I would get on and just, we would start, you know, texting back and forth. For three months, we never spoke to each other like on a phone. We didn't see each other face to face. We just wrote long texts back and forth. I remember Meredith said she went, she went and had lunch with one of her friends and was like crying. 'cause she's like, I love him, but I feel like I'm gonna meet him and not like him. You know, because I go on so many dates and I, and they, they're all nice people, but I don't like them. And I know I'm gonna screw this one up too. And she was really freaking out about it. And then her friend was like, just go meet him this, you know? And then luckily we, when we laid eyes on each other, it was like, oh, this person's great .

Patton admits, their relationship progressed quickly.

Patton: We started texting at the end of February. We met face-to-face on May 20th. And then we got engaged on July 4th, and then we were married in November. And a lot of people that were like, well, that's pretty fast. And the two things I would say to that is, one, we weren't in our twenties where you're like, I gotta figure myself out, man. You know, we're in our late forties. Like we know, we've been in enough relationships to know like, oh, this person's awesome. As you get older, you can fast forward through a lot of the relationship stuff you can fast forward proof, oh, this isn't gonna work. You know, no harm, no foul, moving on. Or Oh my God, I found somebody.

Patton: I was self-conscious about, wow, I'm getting married very quickly. And I had other friends who were widows who were like, I got married six months after my spouse died. You can't let other people prescribe. How you grieve and how you recover. Some people are like, well, I'm uncomfortable with this. Well, it's not your life, so don't even worry about it. That's what you just have to do.

I want to bring the conversation back to where we began. With Patton Oswalt on stage for that Netflix comedy special, telling the story of his wife’s death and breaking the news to his daughter.

Patton on Netflix: That's gonna be longer for me to recover from than my wife passing away. It was horrifying.

Shoshana: One of the stories that you told during that special was of the day that you had to tell Alice that her mother had died, and that's not a funny story at all. (Nope) Why, why was it important for you to tell it?

Patton: Uh, I think it was to put all the pain of that. Behind me by saying out loud that this pain existed, this pain was gone through, and maybe this pain isn't completely conquered, but if I'm able to talk about it, then it doesn't own me.

Patton on Netflix: Monday morning rolls around and I'm bringing her to school, and now I haven't slept in four days and I'm bringing my daughter to school. So as we're walking up. It looked like a junkie had found a kid and was just what she said. The grownups get free apple slices. Is that true?

Patton: To paraphrase my friend Todd Glass, if you can mock it, you can manage it. Not that I mocked that moment, there was no way for me to mock it, but to put it into words and go, yeah, this did happen. It wasn't anything I was keeping bottled up and terrified of anymore.

Shoshana: Did that work?

Patton: Yeah, it definitely did. Like it definitely helped me. And maybe it's something that my daughter can watch someday, you know, and, and help give her some perspective if she needs it. 'Cause I know that this is still an ongoing process. You know, loss and grief isn't just like, oh, boom, we fixed it and now we move on. It's always there in some form or another.

Shoshana: So much of my work is trying to normalize conversations about death and, and grief and the, and the more that we see people that we look up to, talk about it. And, and I think when people can identify themselves in some of these. Stories that we're hearing and people being brave like you, sharing it. It just, it really does help a lot.

Patton: Thank you. Yeah. I've, i've always gotten like really nice messages on Instagram and Facebook of people that watched it and say, Hey, here's where I am. It's three months down the road. Any advice? Stuff like that. It's been very gratifying to have people tell me that that helped them. It definitely feels good.

Shoshana: So it's been nine years since Michelle died. Does grief still feel like fear?

Patton: Um, no grief, just it's not, doesn't feel like fear anymore. It just, it feels like, an experience and a blow that I survived and that I'm aware of how it shaped me. And I try to be conscious of, well, let that try to shape you in a positive way rather than make that have you deliver more pain into the world. That's the best I can do. You know?

CREDITS

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Next time on the show. Yvette Nicole Brown had just finished filming the fifth season of the NBC sitcom Community when she flew back home to Ohio to help her father pack up and move to LA with her.

Yvette: He was just in his house and it was just hoarded not hoarded. So like stacks of books. He would go to Barnes and Noble and buy a whole bunch of books, but he wouldn't read 'em. So they'd be stacked up. And he looked like Rip Van Winkle, like he had this long white beard and long hair. So it was literally like finding father time.

Yvette is one of millions of unpaid family caregivers in this country. And experts say that we don’t do nearly enough to support them.

Ai-jen: We don't have a culture where we care out loud, where we talk about what we need as caregivers, where we support each other as caregivers. That's one of the reasons why culture change is so important to me.

That’s next week on Before We Go.