Heavier Than Heaven

by Charles R. Cross

  As he headed into the kitchen he passed the doorjamb where he and Courtney had begun keeping track of how tall Frances had grown. Only one line was there now, a little pencil mark with her name 31 inches from the floor. Kurt would never see any higher marks on that wall, but he was convinced his daughter’s life would be better without him.

  In the kitchen he opened the door of his $10,000 Traulson stainless-steel refrigerator and grabbed a can of Barq’s root beer, making sure not to lose grip of the shotgun. Carrying his unthinkable load—root beer, towels, a box of heroin, and a shotgun, all of which would later be found in a bizarre grouping—he opened the door to the backyard and walked across the small patio. Dawn was breaking and mist hung close to the ground. Most mornings in Aberdeen felt just like this: wet, moist, dank. He would never see Aberdeen again; never actually climb to the top of the water tower on “Think of Me Hill”; never buy the farm he had dreamed about in Grays Harbor County; never again wake up in a hospital waiting room having pretended to be a bereaved visitor just to find a warm place to sleep; never again see his mother, or sister, or father, or wife, or daughter. He strolled the twenty paces to the greenhouse, climbed the wooden steps, and opened the rear set of French doors. The floor was linoleum: It would be easy to clean. Empathy.

  He sat on the floor of the one-room structure, looking out the front doors. No one could see him here, not unless they were climbing the trees behind his property, and that wasn’t likely. The last thing he wanted was the kind of fuck-up that might leave him a vegetable, and leave him with even more pain. His two uncles and great-grandfather had taken this same grisly walk, and if they had managed to pull it off, he knew he could too. He had the “suicide genes,” as he used to joke with his friends back in Grays Harbor. He never wanted to see the inside of a hospital again, never wanted a doctor in the white lab coat poking him, never wanted to have an endoscope in his painful stomach. He was finished with all that, finished with his stomach; he couldn’t be more finished. Like a great movie director, he had planned this moment to the smallest detail, rehearsing this scene as both director and actor. There had been many dress rehearsals over the years, close brushes that almost went this way, either by accident or sometimes with intent, like Rome. This had always been the thing he kept in the back of his mind, like a precious salve, as the only cure for a pain that would not go away. He didn’t care about freedom from want: He wanted freedom from pain.

  He sat thinking about these things for many minutes. He smoked five Camel Lights. He drank several sips of his root beer.

  He grabbed the note from his pocket. There was still a little room on it. He laid it on the linoleum floor. He had to write in larger letters, which weren’t as straight, because of the surface he was on. He managed to scratch out a few more words: “Please keep going Courtney, for Frances, for her life which will be so much happier without me. I love you. I love you.” Those last words, written larger than anything else, had completed the sheet. He laid the note on top of a pile of potting soil, and stabbed the pen through the middle, so that like a stake it held the paper aloft over the soil.

  He took the shotgun out of its soft nylon case. He carefully folded the case, like a little boy putting away his best Sunday clothes after church. He took off his jacket, laid it on top of the case, and put the two towels on top of this pile. Ah, empathy, a sweet gift. He went to the sink and drew a small amount of water for his drug cooker and sat down again. He pulled the box of 25 shotgun shells open and took three out, sticking them in the magazine of the gun. He moved the action on the Remington so that one shell was in the chamber. He took off the gun’s safety.

  He smoked his last Camel Light. He took another sip of the Barq’s. Outside an overcast day was beginning—it was a day like the one in which he had first come into this world, 27 years, one month, and sixteen days earlier. Once, in his journal he had attempted to tell the story of that very first moment of his life: “My first memory was a light aqua green tile floor and a very strong hand holding me by my ankles. This force made it clear to me that I’m no longer in water and I cannot go back. I tried to kick and squirm, back to the hole, but he just held me there, suspended in my mother’s vagina. It was like he was teasing me, and I could feel the liquid and blood evaporating and tightening my skin. Reality was oxygen consuming me, and the sterile smell of never going back into the hole, a terror that could never be repeated again. Knowing this was comforting, and so I began my first ritual of dealing with things. I did not cry.”

  He grabbed his cigar box and pulled out a small plastic bag that held $100 worth of Mexican black tar heroin—it was a lot of heroin. He took half, a swab the size of a pencil eraser, and stuck it on his spoon. Methodically and expertly he prepared the heroin and his syringe, injecting it just above his elbow, not far from his “K” tattoo. He put the works back into the box and felt himself drift, rapidly floating away from this place. Jainism preached that there were thirty heavens and seven hells, all layered throughout our lives; if he had any luck, this would be his seventh and final hell. He put his works away, floating faster and faster, feeling his breathing slow. He had to hurry now: Everything was becoming hazy, and an aqua green hue framed every object. He grabbed the heavy shotgun, put it against the roof of his mouth. It would be loud; he was certain of that. And then he was gone.

  Epilogue

  A LEONARD COHEN AFTERWORLD

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  APRIL 1994–MAY 1999

  Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld, so I can sigh eternally.

  —From “Pennyroyal Tea.”

  Early Friday, April 8, electrician Gary Smith arrived at 171 Lake Washington Boulevard. Smith and several other workers had been at the house since Thursday, installing a new security system. Police stopped by twice and told workers to alert them if Kurt arrived. At 8:40 Friday, Smith was near the greenhouse and glanced inside. “I saw this body laying there on the floor,” he later told a newspaper. “I thought it was a mannequin. Then I noticed it had blood in the right ear. I saw a shotgun laying across his chest, pointing up at his chin.” Smith called police, and then his company. A friend of his firm’s dispatcher took it upon himself to tip off radio station KXRX. “Hey, you guys are going to owe me some pretty good Pink Floyd tickets for this,” he told DJ Marty Riemer. Police confirmed that a body of a young male had been found at Cobain’s house and KXRX aired the story. Though police were not identifying the deceased, initial news reports speculated it was Kurt. Within twenty minutes, KXRX received a tearful phone call from Kim Cobain, who identified herself as Kurt’s sister, and angrily asked why they were broadcasting such a fallacious rumor. They told her to call the police.

  Kim did, and after hearing the news, she phoned her mother. An Aberdeen Daily World reporter showed up on Wendy’s doorstep soon after. Her quote would go on the Associated Press wire and be reprinted around the world: “Now he’s gone and joined that stupid club. I told him not to join that stupid club.” She was referring to the coincidence that Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Kurt had all died at age 27. But something else his mother said wasn’t reported in any other newspaper—though every parent who heard the news of Kurt’s death didn’t need to read it to know the loss she felt. At the end of her interview Wendy said of her only son, “I’ll never hold him again. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go.”

  Don heard about his son’s death from the radio—he was too broken up to talk to any reporters. Leland and Iris learned from watching television. Iris had to lie down after the news—she wasn’t sure if her weakened heart could take it.

  Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Courtney had become a patient in Exodus, having checked in on Thursday evening. On Thursday she had been arrested at the Peninsula after police had arrived at her “vomit and blood-spattered room” and found a syringe, a blank prescription pad, and a small packet they believed to be heroin (the substance turned out to be Hindu good-luck ashes). After being released on $10,000 bail, she checked
into inpatient treatment, giving up on her hotel detox.

  Friday morning Rosemary Carroll arrived at Exodus. When Courtney saw the expression on Rosemary’s face, she knew the news without having to even hear it. The two women looked at each other for several moments in complete silence until Courtney finally uttered a one-word question: “How?”

  Courtney left Los Angeles in a Learjet with Frances, Rosemary, Eric Erlandson, and nanny Jackie Farry. When they arrived at the Lake Washington house, it was surrounded by television news crews. Love promptly hired private security guards, who placed tarps over the greenhouse so media couldn’t peer in. Prior to the coverings going up, Seattle Times photographer Tom Reese shot a few frames of the greenhouse through a hole in the fence. “I thought it might not be him,” Reese remembered, “that it could be anyone. But when I saw that sneaker there, I knew.” Reese’s photograph, which ran on the front page of Saturday’s Seattle Times, showed the view through the French doors, including half of Kurt’s body, his straight leg, his sneaker, and his clenched fist next to a cigar box.

  By afternoon, the King County Medical Examiner’s office had issued a statement confirming what everyone already knew: “The autopsy has shown that Cobain died of a shotgun wound to the head and at this time the wound appears to be self-inflicted.” Dr. Nikolas Hartshorne performed the autopsy—the task was particularly emotional because Hartshorne had once promoted a Nirvana gig in college. “We put ‘ap-parent’ self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in the report at the time because we still wanted to cross all our t’s and dot all our i’s,” Hartshorne recalled. “There was absolutely nothing that indicated it was anything other than a suicide.” Still, because of the media attention and Kurt’s celebrity, Seattle Police didn’t complete their full investigation for 40 days, and spent over 200 hours interviewing Kurt’s friends and family.

  Despite rumors to the contrary, the corpse was recognizable as Kurt, though the scene was ghastly: The hundreds of pellets from the shotgun shell had expanded his head and disfigured him. Police fingerprinted the body, and the prints matched those already on file from the domestic violence arrest. Though a later analysis of the shotgun concluded “four cards of lifted latent prints contain no legible prints,” Hartshorne said the prints on the gun were not legible because the weapon had to be pried from Kurt’s hand after rigor mortis had set in. “I know his fingerprints are on there, because he had it in his hand,” Hartshorne explained. The date of death was determined to be April 5, though it could have been 24 hours before or after. In all likelihood, Kurt had been dead in the greenhouse while several searches of the main house occurred.

  The autopsy found evidence of benzodiazepines (tranquilizers) and heroin in Kurt’s blood. The level of heroin found was so high that even Kurt—notorious for his enormous habit—may not have survived much longer than it took to fire the gun. He had pulled off a feat that was quite remarkable, though it bore similarities to his Uncle Burle’s actions (gunshots to both the head and abdomen) and those of his great-grandfather James Irving (knife to abdomen, and later ripping the wound apart): Kurt had managed to kill himself twice, using two methods that were equally fatal.

  Courtney was inconsolable. She insisted police give her Kurt’s blood-speckled corduroy coat, which she wore. When the cops finally left the grounds, and with only a security guard as a witness, she retraced Kurt’s last steps, entered the greenhouse—which had yet to be cleaned—and immersed her hands in his blood. On her knees on the floor, she prayed, howled, and wailed, held her blood-covered hands up to the sky, and screamed “Why?” She found a small remnant of Kurt’s skull with hair attached. She washed and shampooed this gruesome souvenir. And then she began blotting out her pain with drugs.

  That night she wore layers of Kurt’s clothes because they still smelled of him. Wendy arrived at the house, and mother and daughter-in-law slept in the same bed, clutching each other during the night.

  On Saturday, April 9, Jeff Mason was employed to take Courtney to the funeral home to view Kurt’s body before it was cremated—she had already requested that plaster casts be made of his hands. Grohl was also invited, and declined, but Krist came, arriving before Courtney. He spent a few private moments with his old friend and broke down crying. As he left, Courtney and Mason were brought into the viewing room. Kurt was on a table, dressed in his nicest clothes, but his eyes had been sewn shut. It was the first time Courtney had been with her husband for ten days, and it was the last time their physical bodies would be together. She stroked his face, spoke to him, and clipped a lock of his hair. Then she pulled his pants down and cut a small lock of his pubic hair—his beloved pubes, the hair he had waited so long for as an adolescent, somehow these needed to be preserved. Finally, she climbed on top of his body, straddling him with her legs, and put her head on his chest and wailed: “Why? Why? Why?”

  That day friends had begun to arrive to comfort Courtney, and many brought drugs, which she indiscriminately ingested. Between the drugs and her grief, she was a catastrophe. Reporters phoned every five minutes, and though she wasn’t in much shape to talk, she occasionally took the calls but to ask questions, not answer them: “Why had Kurt done this? Where had he been that last week?” As with many grief-stricken lovers, she focused on the tiny details so as to avoid her loss. She spent two hours on the phone with the Post-Intelligencer’s Gene Stout pondering such musings and announcing, “I’m tough and I can take anything. But I can’t take this.” Kurt’s death made the front page of the New York Times, and dozens of television and newspaper reporters descended on Seattle, trying to cover a story where few sources would talk to the media. Most filed think-pieces about what Kurt meant to a generation. What else could be said?

  A funeral needed to be arranged. Soundgarden’s Susan Silver stepped forward and scheduled a private service in a church, and a simultaneous public candlelight vigil at Seattle Center. That weekend, a slow procession of friends arrived at the Lake Washington house— everyone seemed shell-shocked, trying to make sense of the unexplainable. Added to their grief was physical discomfort: When Jeff Mason arrived Friday, he found the oil tank completely dry. To heat the huge house, he began to send limos out to buy kindling from Safeway. “I was breaking up chairs because the fireplace was the only way to heat the house,” he recalled. Courtney was upstairs in their bedroom, wrapped in layers of Kurt’s clothes, recording a message to be played at the public memorial.

  On Sunday afternoon the public candlelight vigil was held at Seattle Center’s Flag Pavilion, and 7,000 attended, carrying candles, flowers, homemade signs, and a few burning flannel shirts. A suicide counselor spoke and urged struggling teens to ask for help, while local DJs shared memories. A short message from Krist was played:

  We remember Kurt for what he was: caring, generous, and sweet. Let’s keep the music with us. We’ll always have it forever. Kurt had an ethic towards his fans that was rooted in the punk rock way of thinking: No band is special; no player royalty. If you’ve got a guitar, and a lot of soul, just bang something out and mean it—you are the superstar. Plug in the tones and rhythms that are universally human. Music. Heck, use your guitar as a drum. Just catch a groove and let it flow out of your heart. That’s the level that Kurt spoke to us on: in our hearts. And that’s where the music will always be, forever.

  Courtney’s tape was played next. She had recorded it late the night before in their bed. She began:

  I don’t know what to say. I feel the same way you guys do. If you guys don’t think that to sit in this room, where he played guitar and sang, and feel so honored to be near him, you’re crazy. Anyway, he left a note. It’s more like a letter to the fucking editor. I don’t know what happened. I mean, it was gonna happen, but it could’ve happened when he was 40. He always said he was gonna outlive everybody and be 120. I’m not gonna read you all the note, because it’s none of the rest of your fucking business. But some of it is to you. I don’t really think it takes away his dignity to read this, considering tha
t it’s addressed to most of you. He’s such an asshole. I want you all to say “asshole” really loud.

  The crowd shouted “asshole.” And then Courtney read the suicide note. Over the course of the next ten minutes, she mixed Kurt’s final words with her own comments on them. When she read the section where Kurt mentioned Freddie Mercury, she yelled: “Well, Kurt, so fucking what! Then don’t be a rock star, you asshole.” Where he wrote of having “too much love,” she asked, “So, why didn’t you just fucking stay?” And when she quoted his line about being a “sensitive, unappreciative, Pisces, Jesus man,” she wailed: “Shut up! Bastard. Why didn’t you just enjoy it?” Though she was reading the note to the crowd— and the media—she spoke as if Kurt were her only audience. Toward the end, before reading the Neil Young line Kurt quoted, she warned: “And don’t remember this because this a fucking lie: ‘It’s better to burn out, than fade away.’ God, you asshole!” She finished the note, and then added:

  Just remember, this is all bullshit! But I want you to know one thing: That eighties “tough love” bullshit, it doesn’t work. It’s not real. It doesn’t work. I should have let him, we all should have let him, have his numbness. We should have let him have the thing that made him feel better, that made his stomach feel better, we should have let him have it instead of trying to strip away his skin. You go home, and you tell your parents, “Don’t you ever try that tough love bullshit on me, because it doesn’t fucking work.” That’s what I think. I’m laying in our bed, and I’m really sorry, and I feel the same way you do. I’m really sorry, you guys. I don’t know what I could have done. I wish I’d have been here. I wish I hadn’t listened to other people. But I did. Every night I’ve been sleeping with his mother, and I wake up in the morning and I think it’s him because their bodies are sort of the same. I have to go now. Just tell him, he’s a fucker, okay? Just say, “Fucker, you’re a fucker.” And that you love him.