Sister’s touching eulogy for Steve Jobs reveals final words

“OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW,” the last words uttered by the iconic Steve Jobs have been revealed in an incredibly moving eulogy by his sister Mona Simpson, in the form of an op-ed published in the New York Times.

In the piece, Simpson — who is Jobs’ biological sister — tells the story of how she first met him after a lawyer contacted her with a cryptic message saying that “his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother” and was looking to meet her. Jobs was put up for and adopted at birth. Simpson and Jobs share the same Syrian father.

Describing her first meeting with Jobs, Simpson writes, “When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif. We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers”.

In the 2000-word eulogy, Simpson, who is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, reveals what life was like as a sister to a man who US President Barack Obama, amongst many others described as a “visionary”.

Simpson explains of her eulogy that it is an attempt “to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27-years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying”.

One of the insights shared about Jobs is, “He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures”. The lesson Simpson gleaned from this fact about Jobs is, “If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be”.

Explaining, what is fast becoming an iconic fashion item, Jobs’ ubiquitous black turtle-necks, Simpson explains that, ” Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.”

As Simpson moves on to dealing with her brother’s death, it is a reminder that Jobs — whose memory has faced something of a backlash in recent weeks — was neither the perfect being that some of the initial memorials of him may have made him out to be, but neither was he deserving of some of “backlash” he’s received. Somewhere between the two extremes, is where the most honest memory of Jobs is probably to be found.

By the end of the eulogy, what one is reminded of is that though Jobs certainly was “a visionary,” he was also just a man.

A man who loved his sister, his wife, and his children.

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple died 6 October 2011 and was laid to rest in a private service two days later. A memorial was held at Apple’s Cupertino campus and can be viewed online.

Image: Apple