Steve Job’s sister recently revealed his final words to be “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.”
This sentiment caused a stir as everyone attempted to read into his final six syllables.
What was he experiencing? What does one see in those floating moments behind life and death? Is the light at the end of the tunnel deserving of such strong language?
Perhaps Steve Jobs, being the incredible showman he was, was well aware of the media frenzy that would follow his death. He knew his death would be monitored as the iPad 2 launch was a few months prior, and he wanted to leave the world guessing.
I, somehow, have a hard time believing that.
The recently published transcript of his eulogy given by his sister Mona Simpson illuminates the man behind the acid washed jeans, black mock turtlenecks and his habit of pulling technology out of mailing envelopes.
Though he built up a company whose stock is about as successful as one can be, Steve Jobs tried to stay grounded. Despite his astronomical fame, the words of his sister portray him deeper than the man who graced the cover of TIME eight times.
But back to the “Oh wow.”
Why do we care? Why are we so interested in final words?
Final words are distinctly different from what graces someone epitaph. Unless our will is explicit, usually someone else writes those final words that the world remembers you by, inscribed on grey marble until that too crumbles. Final words come from directly the deceased persons themselves.
The afterlife, death, the mortality of human existence. Humans are obsessed with death, whether we like it or not. But words offer an escape from the finality of the end. Beauty will fail, your hair will thin but words live on forever.
Shakespeare knew words could live longer than he ever could. The Bard has been dead for almost 400 years but most high school graduates will have read something he penned. He’s part of our collective memory.
Just look at Sonnet 18. The final couple reads “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”
It could be read as beauty always being present in the youth, but upon a close reading we realize that these final two lines are about the poem itself.
As long as men can see the print or someone is able to recite the poem, the sonnet is alive and well.
Words are what give humans immortality; our novels live forever in the Library of Congress and our blog posts will forever haunt the intern on servers hidden away in dark basements.
Final words are that last part of a person we can hold on to, that last part of themselves that they created.
Words we speak aren’t some projection someone else puts on another individual. Anything we say is incredibly personal and our words are as much a part of us as anything else we create.
“Think different,” Apple’s trademark slogan, is just as important to us as our iPods. But the finality of Jobs’ last six words is what will stay with us.
We lost an amazing innovator last month, a man who truly changed the way we talk about technology and integrate it into our lives.
His legacy is a great one, but he left us with a new view on the end of our lives: “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.”
Francesca Morizio is a double major in CAS and Kogod. Please send comments and responses to:
