If Tony Hawk’s moving tribute to Kurt Cobain makes you cry, all apologies.
Over the weekend, Hawk decided to honor the late Nirvana frontman after stumbling upon an old ticket stub from a concert he went to on Oct. 20, 1991.
Posting an image of the stub to his Instagram story, Hawk explained that after he competed in a skateboarding competition in Houston, Texas, he decided to check out an alternative rock band from Seattle called Nirvana — who had just released the hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit” just two months prior.
“Went straight from S.U.A.S event at Houston skatepark to this concert in 1991,” he wrote. “It was as transformative as live music can possibly be: We all experienced something rare and powerful that night. The world would never be the same.”
Although many rock fans likely share the same sentiment about the band, which consisted of Cobain, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic at the height of their fame — Hawk’s post then takes a very personal turn.
Cobain died by suicide in 1994, leaving his wife, musician and actor Courtney Love, to raise their 20-month-old daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, on her own.
In 2023, Frances Bean Cobain married Tony Hawk’s son, Riley Hawk. A year later, the couple welcomed a son, Ronin Walker Cobain Hawk. This means that the skateboarding legend and late grunge icon share a grandson.
“I wish Kurt were here,” Hawk concluded. “So he could see the incredible woman his daughter has become, meet her devoted, caring husband, and hold our wondrous grandchild.”
When a screenshot of Hawk’s post made its way to X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday, fans got pretty emotional.
“Who the fuck is cutting onions?” one X user wrote.
“it’s 7 in the morning and this made me sob in public,” echoed another.
“I choose to believe in the multi-verse bc there has to be a timeline where Kurt Cobain and Tony Hawk are hanging out together, being the coolest F*ing grandpas ever. That has to exist. I choose that in a parallel world, it does,” another said.
“American royalty I can get behind,” said a fourth user.
On the 30th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death in April 2024, Frances Bean Cobain posted a tribute to her dad on Instagram in which she admitted that she’s been grieving him “for almost as long as I’ve been conscious.”
“I wish I could’ve known my Dad,” Frances Bean Cobain wrote. “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).”
Although she never really knew her dad, the “Come As You Are” singer’s daughter said mourning someone her entire life has led her on “an expedited path to understanding how precious life is.”
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She also noted that she also feels a closeness to her father, whom, she’s been told, had the same hands as her.
“Kurt wrote me a letter before I was born. The last line of it reads, ‘wherever you go or wherever I go, I will always be with you,’” Frances Bean Cobain wrote. “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.”