<\/p>\n
When Martin Short was 12, his oldest brother died in a car accident. Five years later, his mother died of cancer; three years after that, his father had a stroke and passed away, leaving Short, at 20, the youngest of five, living alone at his family home in Hamilton, Ontario.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a rough eight years,\u201d Michael Short, Martin\u2019s brother, says to him in \u201cMarty, Life Is Short<\/a>,\u201d the new Netflix documentary that alternates between the star\u2019s raucously funny career in show business and a personal life filled with enduring friendships and unbearable tragedy. In the film, Short responded to his sibling with a revealing take on this period of his life: \u201cThere were laughs,\u201d he says, emphasizing the next sentence. \u201cThat\u2019s the point.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked to expand in a recent interview in a Manhattan hotel, with legs crossed, slight and dapper, Short recalled a grim moment right before his mother\u2019s death when both his parents were in the hospital. Short tends to answer questions with anecdotes. He was again with Michael, this time across a breakfast table. \u201cWe looked at each other and started laughing,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was like: How absurd, how ridiculous, how dark can this be? It\u2019s why the phrase \u2018dark comedy\u2019 exists.\u201d<\/p>\n This particular brand of resiliency \u2014 \u201claughing wild, amid severest woe,\u201d as the poet Thomas Gray put it \u2014 is an undercurrent of \u201cMarty, Life Is Short,\u201d which takes its name from Short\u2019s response to a talk-show question about how to cope with the death of parents. He said that you could despair, but that he chose to conclude that life was short and that there were tools developed in disaster. \u201cYou became your own therapist,\u201d he told me, adding that this grieving period helped him develop \u201cmuscles to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He has needed them. In 2010, the love of his life, his wife, Nancy, died of ovarian cancer. In February his daughter, Katherine, died by suicide after struggling with mental illness. While Nancy Short is such a focus of the documentary that the comedian told its director, Lawrence Kasdan, \u201cI had no idea you were in love with my wife,\u201d Katherine\u2019s death doesn\u2019t come up until the end, in a dedication to her and Catherine O\u2019Hara<\/a>, Short\u2019s \u201cSCTV\u201d colleague who died the month before she did and figures prominently in the film.<\/p>\n Now reflecting on the loss of his daughter, Short recalled that his wife\u2019s final words, spoken in her bedroom as paramedics rushed in, were \u201cMartin, let me go.\u201d<\/p>\n We are having trouble retrieving the article content.<\/p>\n Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into<\/a>\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0for all of The Times.<\/p>\n Thank you for your patience while we verify access.<\/p>\n Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in<\/a>.<\/p>\n