A sister's 'heart-wrenching' eulogy for Steve Jobs

The late Apple icon's final words? "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow."

Author Mona Simpson
(Image credit: Najlah Feanny/CORBIS SABA)

Earlier this month, close family, friends, and members of the Silicon Valley elite honored the late Steve Jobs at a private service held at Stanford University. Jobs' sister, the novelist Mona Simpson, gave a "heart-wrenching" eulogy, which was published this weekend in The New York Times. The eulogy revealed details about their relationship (Jobs was adopted, while Simpson was raised by their biological parents, and the siblings didn't meet until adulthood), Jobs' life philosophy, and his final moments. "Even as a feminist, my whole life, I'd been waiting for a man to love, who could love me," Simpson says. "For decades, I'd thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother." Here, an excerpt:

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.

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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...

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.

Read the entire article in The New York Times.

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