Martin Short opens up about ‘nightmare’ death of his daughter Katherine

Martin Short has spoken for the first time about the death of his daughter, Katherine Short, saying her death has been “a nightmare for the family”. Katherine died in February aged 42, at her home in the Hollywood Hills. The County of Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s office confirmed she died by suicide. Speaking on CBS News Sunday Morning , the 76-year-old comedian and actor compared his daughter’s death with that of his wife, Nancy Dolman, who died of ovarian cancer in 2010 aged 58. “The understanding [is] that mental health and cancer, like my wife’s, are both diseases, and sometimes with diseases they are terminal,” Short said. “And 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, ‘Martin, let me go.’ And what [Katherine] was just saying [was], ‘Dad, let me go.’” Short said he had a “deep desire” to take “mental health out of the shadows” so people wouldn’t be “ashamed” of talking about it. “Not hiding from the word suicide, but accepting that this can be the last stage of an illness,” he said. Short also spoke of losing several close friends and family in the past year, including his sister-in-law, his daughter and his friends Diane Keaton , Rob and Michele Reiner and Catherine O’Hara . …