Photo Courtesy of MonaSimpson.com
Steve Jobs met his sister, Mona Simpson, for the first time when both were in their mid-twenties. It seems they remained close for the next twenty-seven years until the day of Jobs’ death. Simpson, who was at Jobs’ deathbed, delivered a touching eulogy during the memorial service at Stanford’s Memorial Church. The eulogy was published on October 30, 2011 in the Op-Ed section of the New York Times. Her words are touching, inspirational, intimate and at the end, graphic.
The eulogy is definitely a tearjerker, so read it here but maybe do so in private if you have the tendency to cry and you’re at work.
If I were to post my favorite quotes from Mona Simpson’s loving words about her brother, I’d end up copying and pasting the entire article because there are so many powerful passages (Simpson, after all, is a professional writer). As a compromise, I’ve included only a few specific quotes about Steve Jobs’ last dying moments:
“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…
When I arrived, he and his 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….
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…
…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.”
Memorial Church at Stanford University
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