How is this any different....

than what has happened in the past with famous people? Eulogies are often published. In fact, one doesn't have to be famous; sometimes you'll read eulogies in the obituaries of your local newspaper, in church bulletins, in newsletters, hear them broadcast on the news, find them on YouTube.

It's also fairly common to report people's last words....if it weren't, how would commenters here have been able to quote the last words of OTHER famous people?

Sometimes, that's what families wish to do. The eulogy was heard by a lot of people at the funeral. Jobs sister seems to have wanted others to know a little of what her brother was like to her, what he meant to the family personally, not as a leader in an industry.

There has been a great deal written about Jobs as head of Apple. Maybe his sister simply wanted something on the record about another side, to add one voice saying: I loved my brother. I miss him. This is who he was to me, no matter what all the news stories have to say.

Grief is difficult, complicated. We have our memories, and we have our words. Jobs sister wanted to share hers...maybe because it helps her? Maybe because the more people who hear what she had to say, the easier it is for her to deal with the emptiness and loss? To feel her brother is not completely gone, or hope people will remember more of him than the businessman, the obsessive?

And what, in the end, is so wrong about wanting those we love, somehow, to live forever?

The dead can no longer be hurt by anything written here or anywhere. The living can. Funerals are for the living, a ritual most humans need and want. They serve a purpose.

There is no excuse for being accusatory and judgmental, when the only "sin" committed was one that happens every single day, in every country in the world: relatives and friends standing up at a funeral, a wake, a memorial service, and sharing their memories of the deceased.

There is comfort for many people in that sharing. There is comfort in knowing someone's last moments were free of fear or pain. That the person you love had the blessing of calm, happy release from incurable, unrelenting agony.

Mocking what a person says as they die is inhumane and childish, considering the dying person is no longer in control, neurons and synapses losing connection, the system failing. But for the family, it may have been a moment of relief, and one that will give them a small smile from time to time when they most need one.