Steve Jobs Death: Sister Tells of Apple CEO's Final Moments; Says Love Was His 'God of Gods'
Steve Jobs loved beauty and was an idealist interested in human emotions, according to a eulogy written by his sister, Mona Simpson, and published in The New York Times Sunday.
Simpson, the younger biological sister who managed to reunite with Jobs relatively late in their lifetimes, wrote the eulogy that was originally read during the former Apple CEO's memorial service on Oct. 16.
The creator of the iPod and iPad "treasured happiness," Simpson wrote. She described the late innovators' last minutes as filled with cherishing the presence of his family and people he cared about.
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The entrepreneur and visionary designer also did not give up his passion, even on his deathbed. Even as he lied, intubated, and could not talk any more, he continued sketching devices to hold an iPad and designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment, Simpson wrote.
Simpson, who is a novelist, painted an image of Jobs as a life-curious, emotionally fragile individual with great love for beauty. "Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?" she asked.
"What amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away," Simpson wrote about Jobs remaining himself even after the cancer devastated his system. The writer described heart-gripping moments of Jobs learning to walk again, with a chair, after his liver transplant.
"He'd push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he'd sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther," she wrote.
"I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed's graduation from high school, his daughter Erin's trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire," Simpson wrote.
Jobs apparently attached a great importance to the people he surrounded himself with, based on his sister's account. He reportedly went through 67 nurses before finding three people - named Tracy, Arturo and Elham - with whom he felt comfortable and whom he felt he could trust.
He was apparently receptive to people's feelings and cared to make those closest to him happy.
"Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love," Simpson wrote. "Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him."
Jobs had tried to find dates for his younger sister, and whenever he came across a man he thought was a proper match, he would ask him if he were single and would he want to date Simpson, she wrote.
"Death didn't happen to Steve, he achieved it," Simpson wrote, describing the visionary's last-minute physical struggling with the act of dying. "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. 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."
Jobs has passed away on Oct. 5, aged 56. In 2004, he overcame an unusual form of pancreatic cancer, and in 2009, he was forced to get a liver transplant. Further deteriorating health led Jobs to announce that he was stepping down as Apple's CEO on Aug. 24.
He was listed in March as 109th on Forbes' list of the world's billionaires, with a net personal worth of approximately $8.3 billion.
Apple performed well during Jobs' absence in the past few months, but many believe it was because he was available for big decisions and also because Tim Cook, the current CEO, was the hands-on manager, even when Jobs was there.
