Cobain's suicide, despite the extremely private nature of his decision or compulsion to hide himself alone in a romm and blow his brains out, quickly came to be seen as greatly symbolic. There's a part of me that understands why.
Depression is no longer a private, psychological matter. It is a social problem and an entire culture of depression has developed around it.
People would be perfectly correct to see his life and the music he created in that short time as utterly symbolic. Nirvana's popularity either inaugurated or coincided with some definite and striking cultural moments. No one can or ever should even think to take that away from him or his memory. But by the time he was alone in his garage apartment with a shotgun in his hand with the intent of doing himself in, his actions were far beyond any kind of cultural momentum we can associate with the times.
No one shoots himself in the head because he's had a bad fishing season or because the papers editorial section has said bad things about him. Depression strikes down deep. The fact that depressions seems to be "in the air" right now can be both the cause and result of a level of societal malaise that so many feel. But once someone is a clincial case, once someone is in a hospital bed, or in a stretcher headed to the morgue, his story is absolutely and completely his own. Every person who has experienced a severe depression has his own sad, awful tale to tell, his own mess to live through. Sadly, Kurt Cobain will never get that far. Ten years later, I can't help but wonder what could have been.