When Kurt Cobain was found dead, I didn’t understand. I watched a girl on the bus absolutely lose her mind, crying, screaming. Then she went too quiet and carved his name into her leg with a bent paperclip.
We just so happened to have a newer bus that day, one with a radio installed because our driver’s usual bus was at the mechanic. The news came over the radio, and I barely noticed until the girl screamed, “He’s dead?!” The bus driver pulled over, got the first aid kit, and cleaned her up. She spoke to her softly. I remember thinking how kind she was.
I knew him as Nirvana, not Kurt Cobain. I wasn’t yet interested in band member names. I wouldn’t understand that it was the day Nirvana died, and an era of music too, until later. Looking back, I can still see her, wearing yellow grunge flannel over a white tank top, torn jeans, Converse. I unconsciously bought that outfit myself in my twenties. That’s how unprocessed trauma works. We repeat it until we can bring it to awareness and process it.
I wore the hell out of that yellow flannel, trying to get it good and threadbare, perfectly grunge. Smudged eyeliner and mascara, ghostly pale skin. Heroin chic was a thing.
In my early thirties, my friend died of it. From across the veil, he told me, “All the music we listened to, they’re all dead now.” He asked me, “Can you imagine bearing that kind of legacy?” He was trying to process what he’d done, the pain of his mother finding him gone, and the grief his loved ones had to live with.
He was right, but he wasn’t seeing how we all knew it was possible, hence the rehab, the prayers, the checking in. He died suddenly, after a few sober years. Triggered. Just one more time, you know?
I still wear flannel sometimes. I still listen to Smells Like Teen Spirit now and then. But it’s hard to sit in that energy knowing what I know from talking with the dead.
© 2025 Raven | Jasmine on the Grave. All rights reserved.
Jasmine on the Grave 
I remember that too it definitely had an impact
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It did. As I’ve gotten older I’ve noticed his death had an effect all over the world. Influence is a beautiful and terrifying thing.
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I had a similar conversation about the grunge era music with a friend last week. “It was beautiful yet severely depressing music. Depression was the theme,” I told him. At the time I didn’t think it affected me but in hindsight I know better. Now that the 90’s are popular again I’m thrilled that all these old bands are getting more play but I’m concerned for the kids listening.
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It is very beautiful music, all raw and talent. I still get excited when it comes on the radio. It’s interesting how you and I came from a time when we weren’t allowed to stand up to authority and so it all was put into our music— the depression, the anxiety and not understanding our parents or their era. Our parents weren’t even allowed to feel anything and, in that way, they couldn’t exist. They passed that to us, in not knowing how to emotionally regulate themselves because they simply weren’t allowed their feelings and perspectives. The hopeful thing is that children today are allowed to stand up to authority figures and they are well spoken and emotionally intelligent where you or I had to actively grow that in ourselves, they are not kept from feeling and speaking and in that way, they have stronger discernment than we were allowed to keep whole in and express. They hear the songs of our time and they might think, how sad, because what a talent! They might go on to do such beautiful things without obstructions to their gifts knowing that lesson in the music rather than having to go through it to learn it all. They can go through it in small increments of song. I think the outlet of music is so important and has helped me heal a lot to have, but once recognizing the price behind such music, I get humbled.
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