Kurt Cobain's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, shared a powerful message on grief on the 30th anniversary of her father's death. The Nirvana frontman was found dead in his Seattle home on April 5, 1994 - he was 27 at the time. He was survived by wife Courtney Love, as well as their daughter Frances Bean, who was just 20 months old at the time.
Cobain, now 31, took to Instagram to share her thoughts on grief and how her father's death shaped her as a person. "30 years ago my dad's life ended. The 2nd & 3rd photo capture the last time we were together while he was still alive," she wrote, as photos show the father-daughter pair playing. "His mom Wendy would often press my hands to her cheeks & say, with a lulling sadness, 'you have his hands.' She would breathe them in as if it were her only chance to hold him just a little bit closer, frozen in time," she continued. "I hope she's holding his hands wherever they are."
View this post on Instagram
Cobain then opened up about what it is like to be grieving "for almost as long as I've been conscious," and shared the purpose that she has learned from the experience. "The duality of life & death, pain & joy, yin & yang, need to exist along side each other or none of this would have any meaning," she wrote, adding that "there is no greater motivation for leaning into loving awareness than knowing everything ends. "I wish I could've known my Dad. I wish I knew the cadence of his voice, how he liked his coffee or the way it felt to be tucked in after a bedtime story. I always wondered if he would’ve caught tadpoles with me during the muggy Washington summers, or if he smelled of Camel Lights & strawberry nesquik (his favorites, I’ve been told)," she continued.. "But there is also deep wisdom being on an expedited path to understanding how precious life is. He gifted me a lesson in death that can only come through the LIVED experience of losing someone. It's the gift of knowing for certain, when we love ourselves & those around us with compassion, with openness, with grace, the more meaningful our time here inherently becomes." She shared that her father wrote her a letter before she was born where the last line reads, "Wherever you go or wherever I go, I will always be with you."
"He kept this promise because he is present in so many ways. Whether it's by hearing a song or through the hands we share, in those moments I get to spend a little time with my dad & he feels transcendent," she wrote, before concluding, "To anyone who has wondered what it would’ve looked like to live along side the people they have lost, I'm holding you in my thoughts today. The meaning of our grief is the same."
