Kurt Cobain's daughter remembers her father 30 years after his death
Frances Bean CobainKurt's thirty-one-year-old daughter confides her emotions to social media on the occasion of the anniversary of her father's death.
Frances Bean Cobainmodel and artist, daughter of Kurt and Coutney Love, was born on August 18, 1992, twenty months before her father's death so she has no memories of him.
To complement the long Instagram post, Frances posts some photographs of her with her father, of Kurt as a child and with his (Kurt's) mother. The first shot, however, is signed by Michel Stipe which immortalized the hands of the American artist. Michel Stipe and actress Drew Barrymore they are his godparents.
To date Frances Bean Cobain controls the rights to his father's name and image.
This is the post published today on the Cobain heir's Instagram page.
30 years ago my father's life ended. The 2nd and 3rd photos are from the last time we were together while he was still alive.
His mother Wendy would often cup my hands on his cheeks and say, sadly, “you have his hands.” She breathed into him as if it were her only chance to hold him a little closer, frozen in time. I hope she holds his hands wherever they are.
For the past 30 years my ideas about loss have been in a constant state of metamorphosis. The biggest lesson I've learned from grieving almost as long as I've been conscious is that it serves a purpose. The duality of life and death, pain and joy, yin and yang, must exist alongside each other or none of it would have any meaning. It is the impermanent nature of human existence that throws us into the depths of our most authentic lives. As it turns out, there is no greater motivation to lean into loving awareness than knowing that everything ends.
I would have liked to know my father. I would like to know the cadence of his voice, how he liked his coffee, or how it felt to be tucked in after a bedtime story. I always wondered if he would take tadpoles with me during the sweltering Washington summers, or if he smelled like Camel Lights and strawberry nesquik (his favorites, I'm told).
But there is also profound wisdom in being quick to understand how precious life is. He gave me a lesson in death that can only come through the LIVED experience of losing someone. It is the gift of knowing for sure, when we love ourselves and those around us with compassion, with openness, with grace, how much more intrinsically meaningful our time here becomes.
Kurt wrote me a letter before I was born. 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 is listening to a song or through the hands we share, in those moments I can spend a little ' time with my father and he feels transcendent.
To those who have wondered what it would have been like to live alongside the people you lost, today I hold you in my thoughts. The meaning of our pain is the same.
