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Comedian Patton Oswalt has a new stand-up special on Netflix called Annihilation. This is his first big show since his wife, Michelle McNamara, passed away a year and a half ago. As we’ve discussed before, Patton became a strong voice about grieving. Annihilation is a comedy show but has some very raw, unfunny moments of Patton honestly addressing his life after the death of his wife. I just watched Annihilation and in my opinion, he handled it beautifully. I held my breath when he started the bit about Michelle but it never got uncomfortable, just sad. But the right amount of sad mixed with jokes at the appropriate time so you don’t feel bad for laughing. It was really quite masterful, I feel. Patton told some outlets that he didn’t approach this as therapy and was merely speaking about his life, which is what he has always done in his act. Patton gave a very lengthy interview to Matt Zoller Seitz at Vulture. Matt is also a widower, which made the whole interview very personal. I had to edit it for length but throughout, they both tried to define how one overcomes grief. In the end, Patton admitted you don’t heal, but rather evolve.

I’ve seen a lot of your stand-up, but I don’t remember you doing anything quite in this vein before, at this length.
Well, my life didn’t stay quite in the vein that I was used to! My stand-up is always about reflecting what my life is about. There are early stand-up specials where I talked about how I was never getting married and I was never having kids. You see me evolving and changing. And now it’s not so much me evolving but adapting to crisis. So I tried the best I could to brave that, and be honest with it.

How do you see death and loss differently now, after losing Michelle?
When it really hits you close, it’s like C.S. Lewis described in A Grief Observed, that [grief] feels like fear. Dealing with other people’s grief and other people’s loss, it can feel like sadness. You can certainly feel empathy. But you don’t feel this sense of fear like, “Is this world even for me now?” That’s a new feeling. Once you realize that people going through real grief are actually feeling that, you can communicate with them so much better.

Were you taken aback by people issuing opinions on your engagement to Meredith Salenger 14 months after Michelle’s death?
No, I wasn’t surprised at all. Have you heard of this thing called Twitter?

Why do you think people feel they’re entitled to have an opinion on what other people do with their romantic life after losing a mate? 
Because there’s no one listening to them. It’s really sad. You see these anonymous accounts, and you realize no one listens to them on even a one-on-one basis. It’s that thing where you feel like you’re floating in this void and anything you can do to feel alive — even if it hurts you or hurts other people — you’ll do it. It’s like a social-media form of cutting. They want to feel something. It’s really, really sad. You look at these lives and they just don’t feel anything. If they don’t feel anything, then they will try to feel any feeling, good or bad.

That idea of the grieving process being “a healing journey” is something that you attack pretty hard in the special, though.
Yes, I do. I’m waking up every day and living. It’s hard to describe it as “healing.” It’s more like you’re evolving.

You know, you never truly heal. But you do evolve into someone different, someone who can still live life and experience joy.

[From Vulture]

You can read the whole interview here. It’s long but there are some lovely moments in it like when Patton talked about his decision to address his grief in Annihilation. Patton said his therapist said it would be just as weird for him not to talk about it as it would for him to include it so he needed to do what was right for him. He didn’t think he was going to be able to do the material all through rehearsals but once he started taping the show in front of the audience, he realized he had to. Hopefully, the show gave him what he sought. And I completely understand the concept of evolving over healing. When something traumatic happens to you, it becomes a part of you. It’s not that you aren’t functioning properly, just differently and that’s okay.

I agree with most of you that Patton and Meredith were pretty over the top when they first got together, then engaged. They can still be over the top but it’s much more infrequent now so I don’t pay it much mind. But my reaction to their lovefest is because it’s not my style. I do like them and I am happy that they found each other. So, I was kind of glad to read that they expected the reaction they got and that it didn’t detract from their big moment (I assume/hope). I also thought his comments about people being so vitriolic on social media because someone is finally listening to them were quite insightful. Unfortunately, the other side of that coin is mob mentality and that’s a whole other can of worms.

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