Frances Bean has honored her dad, Kurt Cobain, on the 30th anniversary of his death. The Nirvana frontman died on April 5, 1994.
“30 years ago my dad’s life ended,” she wrote on Instagram. “The 2nd and 3rd photo capture the last time we were together while he was still alive. His mom Wendy would often press my hands to her cheeks and 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. I hope she’s holding his hands wherever they are.”
She continued: “In the last 30 years my ideas around loss have been in a continuous state of metamorphosing. The biggest lesson learned through grieving for almost as long as I’ve been conscious, is that it serves a purpose. The duality of life & death, pain & joy, yin & yang, need to exist along side each other or none of this would have any meaning. It is the impermanent nature of human existence which throws us into the depths of our most authentic lives. As It turns out, there is no greater motivation for leaning into loving awareness than knowing everything ends.”
“I wish I could’ve known my Dad,” she added. “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). 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 and those around us with compassion, with openness, with grace, the more meaningful our time here inherently becomes.”
She also shared a quote from a letter Cobain wrote her before she was born in August 1992. “The last line of it reads, ‘Wherever you go or wherever I go, I will always be with you,’” she said. “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 and he feels transcendent …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.”
Frances Bean was months away from turning two years old when Cobain died. Now an artist, photographer, and writer, she recently married skater Riley Hawk (son of Tony) in a ceremony officiated by her godfather, Michael Stipe.
