Martin Short opens up about his ‘staggering’ loss in first interview since daughter’s death: ‘A nightmare’

Key Points

• Martin Short has opened up about the recent death of his daughter, Katherine Short.

• “It’s been a nightmare for the family,” he said in his first interview since her death.

• Katherine died by suicide on Feb. 23 after her father lost his friends Catherine O’Hara, Rob Reiner, and Diane Keaton.

Martin Short has broken his silence on the recent death of his daughter.

After Katherine Short was discovered dead at 42 in her Hollywood Hills home on Feb. 23, a representative for the Only Murders in the Building star expressed Martin’s “profound grief.”

“The Short family is devastated by this loss and asks for privacy at this time,” the representative said. “Katherine was beloved by all and will be remembered for the light and joy she brought into the world.”

Two days later, Short’s cause of death was confirmed as a result of suicide. The comedian has since kept a low profile as he prepares to release Marty, Life Is Short, a new documentary about him, on May 12.

Short sat down for his first interview since his daughter’s death on Sunday, telling CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Tracy Smith that “it’s been a nightmare for the family. But the understanding that mental health and cancer, like my wife, are both diseases — and sometimes with diseases they are terminal.”

It isn’t just Katherine’s death that has rocked Short’s life as of late. Before that, he lost friends and collaborators Diane Keaton, Rob Reiner, and Catherine O’Hara, all within the span of a few months. And Marty, Life Is Short functions as a love letter to his wife Nancy, or Nan, died of ovarian cancer in 2010.

“My daughter fought for a long time with extreme mental health, borderline personality disorder, other things, and did the best she could, until she couldn’t. So Nan’s last words to me were, ‘Mart, let me go.’ And she was just saying, “Dad, let me go,'” Short recalled.

“If I wasn’t going to talk about this, then I would have pushed the documentary, because it is — listen, it’s called Marty, Life Is Short,” the actor leveled. “And suddenly, last October, I lost Diane Keaton on the same day I lost my sister-in-law, Nancy’s sister, to cancer. Then Rob and Michelle have been my lifelong friends for 40 years — Reiner. And then Catherine O’Hara and then my daughter. I mean it’s been in four months. Staggering.”

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When Smith asked how Short has been able to comprehend the volume of losses, he responded, “You can’t. You just have to breathe in, breathe out.” Because Short has “never been in therapy,” he described his processing regiment thusly: “What I do is I dictate into my phone and then I transcribe it and I look at it and rewrite it and put it away.” This way, “You find if you’re repeating your same things, maybe you’re moving on a little bit.”

Short concluded the interview by offering some of those insights: “I think we all are in denial about our our our limited time in this earth. It’s very difficult to accept it… But the more you accept it, I think it does lift you and make you feel that this is a complicated little journey, life. And the more we approach it with wisdom, probably the happier we’ll be.”

You can watch Short’s full interview on CBS Sunday Morning above.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly