by Martin Short
But no further rally was in the offing. Nancy only weakened further, slipping gently into unconsciousness within a matter of days. She finally passed away on August 21, 2010. Before she lost consciousness, as, struggling for breath, she saw nine paramedics hurry into our bedroom after I’d placed a frantic 911 call, she calmly turned to me, took my hand, and said, “Marty, let me go.”
And so we did. With me and all three kids in our bed, holding her hand, we let her go.
Nancy’s death was awful, by far the most awful thing I’ve ever been through. Yet life had given me valuable experience to draw upon—not just for my own benefit, but for my kids’. And so I put it to use. The night before Nan died, when we knew it was just a matter of time, I took a moment with Henry, our youngest, to soak in our backyard Jacuzzi. He needed loving and calming. Katherine and Oliver were in the house, keeping vigil.
“Henry, I know it seems unimaginable, but you are being empowered tonight,” I told him. “You are being given something that is horrible, but is also a life lesson. This will make you stronger. This will make you more determined. You’ll be in your office somewhere, someday, and some pompous asshole will say something to you. And you’ll supposedly be upset, and you’ll supposedly be fearful of your boss’s reaction. But then you’ll think, ‘This is gravy. This is fine. I couldn’t care less about this prick. I’m not upset now. I was upset the night my mother died.’”
KATHIE LEE WASN’T WRONG
Nora Ephron took over. Just hours after we lost Nan, she and Nick were at our door, bearing platters of food. So were Eugene and Deb Levy: four kind, familiar faces, a tremendous comfort to me and my kids. The first thing Nora said when she presented herself was, “We loved Nancy, and we love you.” She really turned it on that night, regaling us all with tales of interning in the JFK White House, and how knock-kneed she’d been by the sexy president: “I’m telling you, even the amount of shirt cuff he showed wearing a suit jacket was sexy!” Nora and company took our minds out of the moment in the most considerate, compassionate way.
The next day, the condolence calls started coming in, and the Palisades moms were telling me that I needed to open the house and let people express their grief. I’d been put off by the whole concept of the wake-style open house ever since my brother David’s death, when, to my dismay, I saw people laughing and drinking in our living room in my family’s deepest moment of sorrow. But Nora advised me to let it happen. She planned all the food for that day and made sure our house was ready for the onslaught.
The day after our Short-family shivah, Nora came by with a huge platter of chicken at dinnertime, even though there was a ton of leftover food in the house. “Nora,” I said, “it’s just us tonight. We already have so much food.”
Nora replied, “And now you have more food. This is the way Jews do it. I don’t like everything about being Jewish, but I like how we do this.”
For a day after the visitor stampede, there was a pleasant lull—a merciful period of quiet. Then, on day three after Nancy’s death, I took a call from Paul Shaffer. He said, “Dave wants to reach out to you. That okay?”
I said, “Of course. Why, did you just tell him?”
“Marty,” Paul said, “it’s on the Internet.”
And almost on cue, as he said the words “on the Internet,” my buzzer started going, my phone started ringing nonstop, and there were flower deliveries and paparazzi massed at my gate. And all I could think was, Jesus, I’ve gotta get out of here.
Fortunately, the kids and I had scheduled a trip the next morning to our Canadian refuge in Snug Harbour. We’d already had Nancy’s body cremated so that we could spread the ashes up there. We flew from L.A. to Toronto, and then, from Toronto, took a seaplane that touched down right by our dock.
What the kids and I witnessed as the plane floated into the harbor brought tears: all of my siblings, their spouses, and my beloved nephews and nieces lined up on the dock. And flowers everywhere. Kurt Russell, I later found out, had gone to the florist in the next town and bought out the whole store. Then he went to an antiques store and bought flowerpots. Goldie offered to help, but he told her, “It’s okay, honey, I gotta do this myself.” He planted all the flowers in the pots and lined the dock and the pathways leading up to the main house with them.
Paul Shaffer came up, as did Eugene and Deb, and Walter and Laurie, and we turned it into a celebration. Nancy was adamant that there not be any kind of formal memorial or big fuss, so we honored that. We sprinkled some of her ashes by the tree near her beloved tennis court, and the rest in the lake. The plan was for the kids and me to jump into the ashes as they dissipated into the water. Oliver was the last to jump, and as he did so, he shouted out, “MOTHER!”
It was cathartic. There was laughter instead of crying, and that night, we had a bonfire and a big dinner for the twenty-five or so people gathered. Songs were sung a capella outside, and then we went inside, where Paul played the piano and we kept on singing. The evening was not unlike our Christmas parties—and just how I imagine Nan would have wanted the night to go.
When everyone had gone off to bed, I sneaked back outside to the still-burning fire in the fire pit, overlooking the lake. I stared into the fire, as if looking into Nan’s eyes, and said out loud, with no one else around, “Nan . . . losing you is losing half my soul. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get over this, but I know that I’ll love you forever. And I promise you, I’ll keep our children safe. Love you, baby.”
I couldn’t sleep, so I sat there till dawn. And why not? It was a wondrous night, clear and unseasonably warm, stars everywhere in the sky. When she was alive, with me, there was no place Nan loved to sit more.
It was now late August. Katherine and Ollie had to go back to their jobs in L.A., and Henry back to Notre Dame for his junior year. Before Ollie departed, he gave me a hug and whispered in my ear, “Dad, next year, I want this place filled.” His meaning was obvious: filled with the energy and laughter and the joy of living that Snug Harbour had always represented to our family.
I think everyone was a little apprehensive of leaving ol’ widower Marty alone in his big house in the woods, but it felt completely right to me. I was very clear to everyone: if being here all alone gave me the heebie-jeebies, I’d bail and return to L.A. in a heartbeat.
But I’ll tell you, I felt at peace up on the lake. I spent a further three weeks in Canada, and I enjoyed the solitude. I kept a journal to scribble down my jangled thoughts. At one point Mel Brooks phoned me. He had lost his wife, Anne Bancroft, five years earlier, and he gave me what he felt was the most important advice he could impart: “Don’t go out with any fucking couples. They’ll just piss you off.” Mike Nichols also called, urging me to “just keep the conversation going.” This was valuable wisdom, because the constant banter I maintained with Nancy was like oxygen to me, and to suddenly no longer have it in my life seemed incomprehensible—and, in bad moments, suffocating. In a funny way, I was kind of rooting for something weird to happen, for a sign from my wife. I’d had only that one quasi-paranormal experience as a boy: the profound sadness I felt at summer camp the morning I learned of my brother David’s death.
So there I was, sitting in my kitchen in Snug Harbour, staring at a coffee cup for ten minutes: Move, for Christ’s sake! Nan . . . where the hell did you go?
And indeed something odd did happen while I was alone. I’m not saying that it means anything, but it was a little strange. The first night I got to the lake, as night fell, I got up from my armchair to turn on the lights. I went to switch the stairway light on: pop, it flickered out. Next, the upstairs hallway light: pop, it flickered out. Next, our bedroom light: pop, it flickered out. Then the boys’ room: pop, it flickered out.
I told Goldie and Kurt about this the following day. Goldie totally believed it was some kind of sign, saying, “Babe! Oh, babe! This is classic. Read any book on the paranormal. It’s the first thing that happens.”
Kurt, on the other hand, responded in his typ
ical man’s man way. “Y’know what I’d do?” he said. “I’d phone Gord. I think you got a short.”
Gord Gallagher, our caretaker, came over. He checked things out and said, “I’ll replace the bulbs, but Marty—there’s no short.”
Adamant as Nancy was that there not be a memorial, Rita Wilson called me when I returned to L.A. that September and said, “Marty, Nan’s birthday is coming up on the twenty-sixth and I have to do something. All of her girlfriends are walking around and have no closure. Some of them didn’t even know how sick she was.” Rita was, needless to say, totally right. So the Hankses hosted a warm, beautiful, low-key daytime thing at their home, mostly women. Rita put no pressure on me to come, but I did—for part of it, anyway, as did two of my children, Katherine and Oliver. A smattering of guys, too: Tom, Kurt Russell, Victor Garber and his partner, Rainer Andreesen. And of course Marc Shaiman, who was there to play piano for old time’s sake.
Some people got up and read tributes. Others sang. Victor was too overcome with emotion to do so, but Bette Midler got up and did “The Rose,” which was as powerful and moving as you can imagine.
The assumption at the gathering, understandably, was that I wouldn’t sing. But when Tom, who was acting as an emcee of sorts, suggested as much, I put my hand up and said, “Well, if I’m not going to sing, then why do I have these lyrics in my pocket?” And out of my pocket I pulled a sheet containing the lyrics to “Nancy (with the Laughing Face),” a song made famous by my idol, Frank Sinatra. With Marc at the keyboard as ever, I launched into the song, whose words so aptly and uncannily described my wife.
She takes the winter and makes it summer
Summer could take some lessons from her
Picture a tomboy in lace
That’s Nancy with the laughing face
I’ve kept a collection of the tributes to Nancy that were read on that day, and that flowed into my computer’s in-box in the weeks and months that followed Nancy’s death. Katherine, my daughter, wrote a letter to her mother that she read at the memorial at the lake, and it still melts me. I won’t quote from it at length, but she alluded to our sprinkling of her mom’s ashes in the lake, and wrote, “Whenever I swim in the lake, I’ll be swimming all around your spirit. I will feel the waters rush over me and I’ll feel you.”
Laurie MacDonald was particularly cogent about how Nancy handled her illness. “I don’t think she was completely in denial, particularly in those last heartbreaking months,” Laurie wrote. “My sense was that she had reached a state of grace, or, to be careful not to slip into spiritual cliché, a state of Nan: treasuring every moment with her family, but with a clear and fearless eye toward the mountain in the distance that she would have to cross alone.”
Catherine O’Hara wrote to Nancy, “You’d refuse to suffer fools. Little fools, big fools: ‘You know what? Bye!’ You’d rather turn away from a boring dinner companion than misuse one precious moment. You wouldn’t stand for bullshit. You’d be awestruck at ignorance. You’d take the time to help those truly in need and fearlessly foil the self-indulgent, the self-conscious, and the self-pitying.”
Rita Wilson wrote, “Nancy taught me how to notice if a snake had crossed a trail by pointing out the S-shaped rut left in the dry dust. . . . In the mountains, where Nancy cross-country-skied, snowshoed, and hiked, it was hard to keep up with her. If you were Nancy’s friend, you were ‘walking the walk.’ Literally.”
My brother Michael wrote, “If there’s a heaven, Nancy is up there getting things ready for us. I imagine there’s some redecorating going on. She’ll tell God he has nice shoulders, and he’ll make the changes. And sure enough, by the time the rest of us get there, it’ll be perfect.”
Eugene Levy wrote to me, “I miss being able to say ‘Marty and Nancy.’ I miss the sound of her name rolling off of Ed Grimley’s lips whenever you had an apology to make for some petty domestic offense. I miss seeing her at the kitchen island juggling five side dishes to a meal she dismissed as ‘Oh, this is nothing.’ I miss her coming to my defense at your dining-room table every time you attacked the size of my portions.”
One of the most touching tributes came from Steve Martin, who composed a song in memory of Nancy for his 2011 banjo album with the Steep Canyon Rangers, Rare Bird Alert. The song, an instrumental, is called “The Great Remember.” In his liner notes to the album, Steve writes, “I almost wrote lyrics for this tune, but realized that lyrics were somehow, mysteriously, implied. It is dedicated to the memory of Nancy Short, whose vitality and love of laughter made elegies easy but grief doubly hard.”
Steve, as polished and poised a stage presence as he is, had a hard time performing “The Great Remember” at first. When that album first came out, he was doing a promotional interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC. Diane (who also happens to be married to Mike Nichols) was a friend of Nancy’s and knew what the song was about, so she prompted Steve to play it solo on his banjo. Steve spluttered as he started to introduce the song and was nearly overcome by tears. “I’m just gonna play it,” he said, and he did so, very beautifully. The lead melody of the song is a gently rising figure that is intuitively elegiac, yet not remotely funereal. It sounds like a song that would play under the closing credits of a particularly fulfilling family movie that you’re sorry to see come to an end.
I aggressively threw myself into work in the first few months of life without Nancy. My basic attitude was that if I was in a dressing room in Boston or Grand Rapids, straightening my tie before a show, it would feel kind of normal, as if I was just on the road as usual. Whereas at home in the Palisades, sleeping alone in that big bed . . . well, that would take some getting used to.
We were, as a couple, like a big 747 jet plane, powered by two engines. But now one engine is out. Nevertheless, the plane is still filled with passengers, and there’s a lot of responsibility, a lot of lives still to influence. So the plane must continue to fly with one engine. It travels onward, but with a bit more effort and struggle, and with no time to flirt with the stewardess or get a coffee.
Steve Martin was one of the people who best understood my need to keep moving forward. For all our years of friendship, he and I had never performed together onstage, live. Yet in June of 2011 we were given an opportunity to do just that, headlining the TBS Just for Laughs comedy festival in Chicago. We billed our show as “Steve Martin and Martin Short in a Very Stupid Conversation.” We’re more polished now, but that first time out, we just sort of winged it. . . .
STEVE: Marty, let me say that it’s been a longtime dream of mine to perform here at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Chicago. And tonight, I feel I am one step closer to that dream.
MARTY: Steve, you’d tell me if you’d had a stroke, wouldn’t you?
STEVE: Not necessarily.
MARTY: But Steve, you’re right. It is a thrill to be here. And can you believe that we’re playing to a sold-out house?
STEVE: Well, Marty, I actually believe that it’s we who have sold out.
Steve did some banjo tunes, I did some characters, and then the two of us interviewed each other about our respective careers.
STEVE: What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
MARTY: I once did a pilot in 1980.
STEVE: I didn’t ask you the worst sex you’d ever had.
I vacated the stage while Steve played banjo, and Steve pretended to nap in a cot onstage while I sang my ode to Osama bin Laden, “Bastard in the Sand,” set to the tune of Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind.” I also did an interview with Steve as Jiminy Glick, telling him, “Your skin is so youthful. I’m not saying it’s firm. But it’s very youthful.” To the crowd, Jiminy said, “There are very few people as pale as Steve who actually have a heartbeat. He looks like a coloring book that hasn’t been colored in yet. He once got a sunburn from his Kindle reader.”
Steve and I so enjoyed the experience that we’ve continued to do this double act for a handful of dates every year, but with increasing amounts of preparati
on and set-list determination, because Steve, for some reason, cares about professionalism.
A big adjustment to life without Nan was learning how to go about having fun, enjoying oneself. How would it work? “Ticket for one, please.” “A table? No, I’ll just sit at the bar, thanks.” Steve was always encouraging me to come back to his place in St. Barth’s. I was understandably apprehensive, because it was a place I’d only ever been with Nan. But, like all fears in my new, widower’s existence, this one had to be conquered. So I agreed to come join Steve and Anne for a January vacation.
In my mind, St. Barth’s was a couples’ paradise—and, therefore, a daunting place for me to go, for the first time, as a single man. But as it turned out, whatever trepidation I was feeling as I flew down was wholly preempted by Steve’s anxiety about the paparazzi who were lurking everywhere. Princess Diana visited St. Barth’s once, and the tabloid photographers never left. Now, obviously, in certain circumstances, when you’re a celebrity, having your picture taken is part of the agreement. However, it’s another thing entirely to walk out of the surf with seawater flowing out of your nostrils, your hair plastered flat onto your forehead, and your stomach protruding like you’ve just eaten Kim Jong-un, to discover a telephoto lens pointed right at you, cradled by some goofball who’s been hiding in the bushes most of the day. Later on the pictures show up in some supermarket paper, and people looking at them say to themselves, “Gee, I had no idea he was with child!” At no point in my life has my nickname ever been Ol’ Washboard Abs. Even during athletic competitions in my youthful prime, when someone would call out, “Shirts and Skins,” I would pray that the Shirts team would pick me. And to be sure, those celebrity weeklies are rarely looking for the money shot of someone’s good side.
My coming to St. Barth’s on this trip particularly concerned Steve, because, he explained, he had been down for a week before I’d arrived and found the island to be more paparazzi-infested than ever. So the thought of two well-known actors galumphing together in the water would attract still more attention than one galumphing by himself. But Steve, wily fellow that he is, had an idea.