Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain famously took his life on April 5, 1994. Thirty years later, his daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, took to Instagram to reflect on her father's life, love and legacy. She is Cobain's only daughter with Courtney Love, his wife and the frontwoman of Hole. Frances last saw her father when she was less than two years old, just days before he committed suicide.
On Instagram, Frances posted a seven photo slideshow of her father.
The second and third photos, "capture the last time we were together while he was still alive," she wrote. The two photos show Kurt giving a tiny Frances a kiss on the cheek and then scooping her up and dangling her playfully upside down. The remaining photos show Kurt as a child himself along with a photo of his hands.
Frances highlighted how much her father's hands hands mean to her grandmother:
"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. I hope she's holding his hands wherever they are. In the last 30 years my ideas around loss have been in a continuous state of metamorphosing."
She continued to say that she has learned about the dualities of life, "life & death, pain & joy, yin & yang," and how one half cannot exist without the other. Without each other "none of this would have any meaning," she noted.
"As it turns out, there is no greater motivation for leaning into loving awareness than knowing everything ends," wrote the rock legend's daughter.
Because she was so young at the time of his death, Frances wrote that she wishes she "could've known my Dad." She lists features she wishes she knew about her father, like his scent and how he prefers his coffee. Her emotions are palpable through the screen as she writes of Kurt's "Camel Lights & strawberry nesquik."
She describes the loss of her father as something she's gained a "deep wisdom" from "being on an expedited path to understanding how precious life is." His death offered her 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 detailed a letter Kurt wrote her before she was born, saying that the last line tells her "wherever you go or wherever I go, I will always be with you." Frances affirmed that her father "kept this promise" to her by appearing all around her.
"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," concluded the post. Frances punctuated the caption with a glittering emoji, pointing to the transcendence of her father.
Frances Bean Cobain is a model and artist. She is married to Riley Hawk, the son of skateboarding legend Tony Hawk. She also controls the rights to her father's name and image.
