Joe Humphreys: Steve Jobs’s dying words were ‘Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow!’ What might yours be?

Karl Marx coined a few memorable phrases. But his last recorded utterance was an angry exclamation directed at his London housekeeper: “Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!”Terry Eagleton, who has written several books on Marx in a prodigious literary career, is less dogmatic about deathbed sayings. The 83-year-old critic is a good deal more humorous too.“One’s deathbed is an ideal occasion for coming up with high-sounding but vacuous pronouncements, statements which are worthless in direct proportion to their general acceptability. It is the kind of stuff one might hear from the balcony of the Vatican or the United Nations Security Council,” writes Eagleton in his latest, and perhaps last, book (or so he grimly states).Who knows when our time is up? Eagleton recalls that his father – a “kindly, thoughtful man”, one of the 10 children of Irish immigrants who left school at 14 to work in a factory – learnt he was dying by accident when he overheard a doctor talking about his condition. Eagleton snr was spotted reading a book just once his life – it was an Agatha Christie and he quickly tired of it – whereas his university-educated son has written enough words over the decades to fill a small library.READ MOREA Death of One’s Own: Reflections on Mortality is Eagleton’s attempt to make sense of it all. He is sceptical of the idea that an individual close to death has “access to some secret knowledge, like a shaman or high priest”. But last words can reveal something about the speaker’s character.Lying in a dingy hotel in Paris before he expired, Oscar Wilde looked around and said: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”The dying words of Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple, were “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow!” – like he was launching a new product.The great orator Winston Churchill left the world with a disappointing “I am bored with it all”, while British naval commander Horatio Nelson came up with the sorrowful yet comical “Kiss me, Hardy” – directed at the captain of his ship in the Battle of Trafalgar.Oscar Wilde in 1883. Photograph: Napoleon Sarony Critiquing the quality of such statements may seem uncouth. Being able to say anything comprehensible in those final moments would be a small miracle, given the chances of either being pumped full of drugs or lost to dementia at that stage – and that’s if you actually live to be a ripe old age. Personally, I’d be very happy with “Oh wow!”Eagleton tells of a friend who was lying terminally ill in his bedroom when the man’s partner suddenly heard him mutter something she didn’t catch. “‘What did you say?’ she asked. ‘Goodbye,’ he said. Then he died.”Karl Marx's last words were: 'Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!' Photo: Getty There have been “more memorable last words”, Eagleton notes, but “goodbye” was apt in this case. “He died as he had lived, briskly, unsentimentally, with his upper-class distaste for superfluous emotion.”Perhaps the most celebrated parting phrase from literature is Hamlet’s “the rest is silence” even though it’s not entirely coherent. Who is experiencing the silence? Not Hamlet since he is dead. And not those left behind – they chat away over his corpse. But at least it has the value of being a fully-formed sentence.A general rule of drama is that no one should die mid-line. Imagine if Mel Gibson had ended Braveheart with: “Freed-urgh!”The English author Julian Barnes (80) explores similar territory in his latest book Departure(s) – also billed as potentially his last. He recalls a teacher in school telling the class he had already prepared what he was going to say on his deathbed – just a single word: “Damn!”[ Would you want to live in the afterlife?Opens in new window ]“Perhaps he meant it simply as a curse at the ending of his life; though his pupils who were cynical about most of the masters, interpreted it as violent regret for the wasted life he was now farewelling.”In a poignant finale to his book, Barnes imagines not last words but a last scene where he encourages the reader to keep a sense of wonder – “don’t stop looking”.[ Does your life lack direction? Too much urgency may be to blameOpens in new window ]What might you say when the moment comes? A macabre question perhaps. But part of being human is imagining one’s life has a coherent plot. We feel compelled to conjure up a meaningful storyline from apparent randomness, and what better way to conclude that narrative than a bon mot before curtain call.Arguably, there’s an egotistical streak to such contemplation. But give me the human ego over a future dictated by artificial intelligence where the final act will be marked by the words “shutting down” and then a great blankness.In his witty yet wise study of death, Eagleton identifies one saying that really stuck with him. It was from an ailing friend who turned to the author as he left his room after what proved to be his final visit: “Might just see you again.”The holding out for hope, but not too much hope, in that single word “might” is humanity in a nutshell.Yes, the best of last words are surely inconclusive. They are a promise of something more; an acknowledgment that we are always in the middle between the known and unknown. Which is why ... [You’ve reached your word limit – Ed.]