Frances Bean wishes she could have known dad Kurt Cobain on the 30th anniversary of his death

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — Frances Bean Cobain has penned a candid and heartfelt tribute to her father Kurt Cobain on the 30th anniversary of his death.

Cobain was a toddler when her father, who was the frontman of legendary grunge band Nirvana, took his life.

On Friday she posted a series of photos on her verified Instagram account, showing both herself as a youngster with her father, and he as a child himself in older pictures.

“30 years ago my dad’s life ended,” she wrote. “The 2nd & 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 & 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 decades since his death, the younger Cobain says her “ideas around loss have been in a continuous state of metamorphosing” with “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,” she wrote. “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.”

Cobain is the only child of the “All Apologies” rocker and was born to him and Hole frontwoman and actress Courtney Love.

In her post, Cobain expressed the pain of never knowing her father.

“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,” she wrote. “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).”

“He gifted me a lesson in death that can only come through the LIVED experience of losing someone,” Cobain added. “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 also shared that in a letter her father wrote to her before she was born, he included a line that read, “wherever you go or wherever I go, I will always be with you,” a promise she says he has kept “because he is present in so many ways.”

“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.”

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