Steve Jobs' Last Words

Back on August 24^th this year, the world learned that Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple. It was only a matter of time until his death a few weeks later on Oct. 5^th. The world had lost one of its most brilliant innovators…the mastermind behind Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes. He was compared to Thomas Edison and even to Leonardo da Vinci. He was only 56, succumbing to pancreatic cancer.

His eulogy was given by his sister, Mona Simpson on Oct. 16, 2011, at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University. Below are excerpts. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html?_r=1

We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.

What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.

Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.

He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”

“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”

When I arrived, he and his wife Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.

Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.
Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.

His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.

This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.

He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.

Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.

He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.

This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.
He seemed to be climbing.

But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.

Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.

Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve’s final words were:
“OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”

Biographer Walter Isaacson relates that Jobs, a self-proclaimed Buddhist, began questioning the meaning of life and God in the past few months before his death.

“I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden one day and he started talking about God,” recalled Isaacson. “He said, ‘Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50-50 maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of – maybe it’s cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated. Somehow it lives on.’”

Isaacson continued, “Then he paused for a second and he said, ‘Yeah, but sometimes I think it’s just like an on-off switch. Click and you’re gone.’ He paused again, and he said, ‘And that’s why I don’t like putting on-off switches on Apple devices.’”

As a Catholic theologian, I was fascinated by the last words Jobs spoke  “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.”

Steve Jobs had traded his time for human progress. Not for personal pleasures. This was not a man who spent his time building homes or custom yachts or who otherwise obsessed with how to spend his billions on himself. And no one would say of him that he ever seemed to have a lot of spare time on his hands. There is little doubt in my mind that the Higher Power Jobs wondered about turned the “on” switch for him in all its brilliance.

It would be no surprise to me in eternity to learn that Jobs’ last words were followed by “Well done, my good and faithful servant… Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. ”