In his piece, Oswalt celebrates McNamara’s existence as “a life spent fascinated with people and relationships and the unknown.”
“I loved her,” he writes. “This is the first time I’ve been able to use ‘I’ writing this. Probably because there hasn’t been much of an ‘I’ since the morning of April 21. There probably won’t be for a while. Whatever there is belongs to my daughter—to our daughter. Alice.”
As for the mark McNamara—who made a name for herself by following strange and often unsolved crime stories (like that of the Golden State Killer, which she investigated for the LA Times, or the many others that she documented on her blog, True Crime Diary)—left behind, Oswalt states:
The reaction to her passing, the people who are shocked at her senseless absence, is a testament to how she steered her life with joyous, wicked curiosity. Cops and comedians call—speechless or sending curt regards. Her family is devastated but can’t help remember all of the times she made them laugh or comforted them, and they smile and laugh themselves. She hasn’t left a void. She’s left a blast crater.
Oswalt also quotes their daughter, Alice, who, unable to sleep early one morning because of grief, told him, “When your mom dies you’re the best memory of her. Everything you do and say is a memory of her.”
And what a worthy memory.
Read the full eulogy here.
Image via Getty.
