“Over the last few months, a steady stream of visitors to Palo Alto, Calif., called an old friend’s home number and asked if he was well enough to entertain visitors, perhaps for the last time,” Charles Duhigg reports for The New York Times.
“In February, Steven P. Jobs had learned that, after years of fighting cancer, his time was becoming shorter,” Duhigg reports. “He quietly told a few acquaintances, and they, in turn, whispered to others. And so a pilgrimage began.”
“Mr. Jobs spent his final weeks — as he had spent most of his life — in tight control of his choices. He invited a close friend, the physician Dean Ornish, a preventive health advocate, to join him for sushi at one of his favorite restaurants, Jin Sho in Palo Alto,” Duhigg report. “He said goodbye to longtime colleagues including the venture capitalist John Doerr, the Apple board member Bill Campbell and the Disney chief executive Robert A. Iger. He offered Apple’s executives advice on unveiling the iPhone 4S, which occurred on Tuesday. He spoke to his biographer, Walter Isaacson. He started a new drug regime, and told some friends that there was reason for hope.”
Duhigg reports, “But, mostly, he spent time with his wife and children — who will now oversee a fortune of at least $6.5 billion, and, in addition to their grief, take on responsibility for tending to the legacy of someone who was as much a symbol as a man… ‘Steve’s concerns these last few weeks were for people who depended on him: the people who worked for him at Apple and his four children and his wife,’ said Mona Simpson, Mr. Jobs’s sister. ‘His tone was tenderly apologetic at the end. He felt terrible that he would have to leave us.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
::sigh::
Dammit, I thought the tears were over with.
@Zeke
That was my reaction as well!
Such a brave man, all the more heartbreaking.
He wasn’t finished 🙁
I think we all feel terrible that he had to leave as well!
If that doesn’t choke you up you need to see if YOU have a pulse. Heart wrenching to say the least.
This is an Edna St Vincent Millay poem that was really going through my mind this week. No comfort, but truth, and sums up how a lot of people have been feeling.
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and laurel they go: but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains – but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love –
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind:
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Nice poem Ki 🙂
I have a Pearl Jam song called ‘The End’ running through my veins, it is so simple, so sad, and so powerful. But above all else I just think of Steve whenever I hear it. I well up, it’s beautiful, the tears are sad, but for some reason I feel joy. Joy that he led the life he did, he put the ding in the universe that was his goal.
Here’s a link to a live version – it’s stunning;
And here’s the lyrics to that song;
What were all those dreams we shared
Those many years ago?
What were all those plans we made
Now left beside the road?
Behind us in the road
More than friends, I always pledged
Cause friends they come and go
People change, as does everything
I wanted to grow old
I just want to grow old
Slide up next to me
I’m just a human being
I will take the blame
But just the same
This is not me
You see?
Believe…
I’m better than this
Don’t leave me so cold
I’m buried beneath the stones
I just want to hold on
I know I’m worth your love
Enough…
I don’t think
There’s such a thing
It’s my fault now
Having caught a sickness in my bones
How it pains to leave you here
With the kids on your own
Just don’t let me go
Help me see myself
Cause I can no longer tell
Looking out from the inside
Of the bottom of a well
It’s hell…
I yell…
But no one hears
Before I disappear
Whisper in my ear
Give me something to echo in my
Unknown futures ear
My dear…
The end
Comes near…
I’m here…
But not much longer.
He was like a family us.
I’m proud of Steve Jobs in that that I’m proud the human family I am a member of could produce someone like him.
I’m proud that his nature was to feel robbed, that he had more to offer and was sorry he couldn’t, viewing himself as much a servant to humanity as a member of it. If more of our leaders had that attitude, the world would be a better place.
But I deeply hope that in his final lucid moments he could feel warmth, peace and accomplishment. Few in modern history deserved that feeling more.
very well said
thank you
Steve left us with the examples and words to drive us on.
Steve did this with a degree of clarity & sparseness in focusing and doing one thing “right” and to the best we can do for top notch human usability of the products we design.
Makes a grown man cry.
“Death is not extinguishing the light,
It is turning out the light
because the dawn has come.”
— Rabindranath Tagore
Tangled up in blue.
Dean Ornish, huh? Ouch.
Even though most of us never had the honor of meeting Steve or knowing him personally, our grief is overwhelming and beyond measure. My thoughts and prayers are now with Mrs. Jobs and their children.
– amen
Ki,
Thank you for the poem. That was beautiful.
…and to think that this rarity of a Real Man
was still doubted as a genius by naysayers,
still insulted as a philanthropically poor,
when he always gave the world by changing it through beguiling products, sublime services, supporting countless jobs in countless industries, giving users real smiles etc., all the while keeping his charitable donations anonymous, not perversely showing it off like Billy Gates of Hell Foundation etc.
Steve Jobs for President is now iGod on iClouds
bless you & your family for giving us too much ; )
beyond what we deserved – not living life to daily accomplishment…
iThankYou iBodhisattva
i’m not religious but that’s not @ God.
i just lost mine. my iGod.
iSteve, iPhone4S (iPhoneForSteve) is one Sirius gem.
physically gone, not otherwise!
what an Nietzschian Übermensch…
see you later allig…!
thanks. merci. danke. gracias. grazie. shukran.
谢谢 (chi) ありがとう (jap) 감사합니다 (kor)
спасибо (rus) ευχαριστίες (grk)
A class guy till the end ,so very sad .
Few actually knew him personally, yet we all feel like we knew him and that’s why we just plain call him Steve. No need for last names. He left all the ducks in a row for us, now the question is what are we going to do with what he left us. I wish I could have met him personally…even let him yell at me or something…would’ve been great to have been hollered at by Steve.
is it not amazing to have lived in Steve’s lifetime!
humans for 1000s of years missed out on this comet,
whilst the future generations will too.
we were lucky no matter if we met him or not, in person,
as we all felt him, as he touched us all deeply,
whether we agree or not. his influence in quality & aesthetics & ease & philosophy & & & infiltrated all industries, not just tech.
we knew him as he symbolized & lived what we all aspire to reach. for him, there was no secret to life & happiness, as he was so damn focused in reality (his reality distortion field claims by the media is thus ludicrous, as we all lived lamely without it), he would not spend 2 days without recalibrating himself to live his Dream, to accomplish something daily.
the most followed funeral in history could be Gandhi’s or Diana’s. Steve’s will be more impactful.
bless you miSteve!
Red puffy eyes still ……. We will miss Steve …..
We love you Steve …..
His loss is incalculable, but if there’s a bright side it’s that he lived so long after the initial diagnosis. He was able to deliver the iPhone and iPad and see his company assume its rightful place as tech industry leader.
If he’d died back in 2004 I doubt the response would have been as huge – or Apple’s future as assured.
Wednesday started out a mellow day, my 54th birthday as a matter of fact. Work a little, lunch with a friend, calls from my sons.
Then the news and a feeling of emptiness.
Birthdays will have a hint of melancholy, tinged with feelings of warmth for a great man.