Tech: Steve Jobs' Final Words

Yesterday in the Sunday edition of the New York Times an op-ed was delivered by someone named Mona Simpson, a famous novelist and a professor of English at UCLA. Mona Simpson was Steve Jobs biological sister, and the op-ed was actually the eulogy that she delivered at his memorial service on Oct. 16th. In it she revealed Steve's final words before he fell to sleep the last time before passing. But first I would like to quote a few beautiful excerpts from the eulogy.

"I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes. 'You can do this, Steve,' she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other. He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man."

This was actually a little known story, few new until recently he actually even received a second transplant, this time for his liver. Let alone had to relearn to walk. Clearly a story of a man being reduced to simple means.

"Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face."

Yet another intimate detail, so few really could have understood the man's genius, on his death bed, to be sketching and designing new ways for people to think. Here below are the final words of Steve Jobs as recited by Mona Simpson.

"But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve's capacity for wonderment, the artist's believe 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, then over their shoulders past them. 

Steve's final words were: 

OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW."

I implore you to read the full article on the NY Times website, it is quiet beautiful.