How Steve’s Death Has Affected Me

Since I learned of Steve’s death I have been struggling to write how I feel about it. I know deep down in my heart how I feel, but translating those emotions to words has been challenging.

I was at work when I learned of Steve’s passing. It was around 8:45am when I heard. We were in the middle of an “assist visit” from a group of auditors rifling through our networks and network documentation. I was sitting at my desk when a colleague walked through our office door and screamed my way, “did you hear the news?”

“What news?” I had been engrossed with work, and although we had two televisions tuned to the MLB playoffs, I had not been paying attention.

“He’s dead. Steve Jobs just died dude.”

“Shut the fuck up dude,” I screamed back, while a small chill slowly crawled down my spine. I did not really believe my colleague. We are always joking about various things so it was not out of the realm of possibility for someone to say something this fucked up. My co-workers like to tease me about Apple, so I thought this was just another one of those pranks.

“No, I’m serious. It’s on the news. He just died!”

About all I could muster up was a, “whoa, that fucking crazy.” I quickly switched to the internets and jumped over to CNN. Sure enough, they had one of their “breaking news” alerts at the top of the site. It was short: Apple Co-Founder, Steve Jobs has passed away. Twitter was overflowing with tweets about Steve’s passing

Wow. Just wow.

As a human being hearing the news of another’s death, a wave of sadness immediately washed over me. I had no personal interaction with Steve but I was still upset to hear he passed. Although his health was in a precarious position, his death felt sudden.

For reasons I am still unable to fully comprehend today, as the reality of the situation set in, this huge wave of sadness hit me as if I were being smacked in the face. I believe I did a pretty good job hiding my emotions at work – something I think I am good at overall – but I am still pretty upset and even more confused. In fact, I do not normally consider myself an emotional person. I have only ever felt this way when a family member has passed away.

But why so much emotion for a man I have never met? Anecdotally, I do not appear to be the only one who feels this way. Many people are just as surprised and saddened by this loss. I have read a good deal of tweets and facebook quips from people who feel similarly.

Even as I write this I can feel the emotions. For some peculiar reason I am hugely sad to see Steve pass. This is a man I had never met once in my life but who is seemingly having a huge impact on my emotions.

I have never felt this way when someone I did not personally know has passed away. This is the type of impact Steve had on the world, on people, even without personal interaction. He touched people’s lives in ways that others have never come close to. Surely this is why Apple is so successful at creating products with such emotional appeal. Steve’s best product was himself.

Steve Jobs will be missed. Rest in peace m’friend.