Steve Jobs' Final Words: 'Oh Wow'

In a eulogy delivered to the New York Times, novelist and loving sister Mona Simpson reveals the last moments of Steve Jobs’ life, as he said goodbye to the family he loved so much.

“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,” Mona said.

“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,’” Jobs said, according to the novelist.

When she arrived, Steve 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.”

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“Then, after a while, 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,” said Simpson.

“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.”

The doctor had given Jobs a 50/50 chance of making it through the night. He did, with Laurene sitting next to him on the bed.

“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,” Mona said.

“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.”