Friday marks the 30th anniversary of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s death, and his only child, Frances Bean Cobain, marked the occasion with a moving post on Instagram.
Alongside a series of photos of her dad—including a portrait of his hands, childhood photos of Kurt, and two shots of Frances and Kurt together—Frances wrote about what it’s been like to have grieved him “for almost as long as I’ve been conscious.”
“30 years ago my dad’s life ended,” she wrote, before sharing the “biggest lesson” she’s learned through grieving: “It serves a purpose. ... As it turns out, there is no greater motivation for leaning into loving awareness than knowing everything ends.
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“There is also deep wisdom being on an expedited path to understanding how precious life is,” she continued. “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.”
Frances is the only child of Kurt and singer Courtney Love. Now 31, she works as a visual artist, producer, and model, and got married last year to Riley Hawk, the son of pro skateboarder Tony Hawk.
Frances—who was only 1 year old when her father committed suicide on April 5, 1994—added in her post, “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).”
Frances also shared that her father had written her a letter before she was born. “The last line of it reads, ‘Wherever you go or wherever I go, I will always be with you,’” she revealed. “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 concluded with a message of solidarity with other people grieving their loved ones: “To anyone who has wondered what it would’ve looked like to live alongside the people they have lost, I’m holding you in my thoughts today. The meaning of our grief is the same.”
