Ondrej Holzman Mona Simpson is a writer and professor of English at the University of California. She gave this speech about her brother, Steve Jobs, on October 16 at his memorial service at Stanford University's church.
I grew up as an only child with a single mother. We were poor, and since I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined him as Omar Sharif. I hoped he was rich and kind, that he would come into our lives and help us. After I met my father, I tried to believe that he changed his phone number and left no address because he was an idealistic revolutionary who was helping to create a new Arab world.
Although a feminist, I've been waiting all my life for a man I could love and who would love me. For many years I thought he might be my father. At the age of twenty-five I met such a man - he was my brother.
At the time, I was living in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I worked for a small magazine, I sat in a tiny office with three other job applicants. When a lawyer called me one day—me, a middle-class California girl begging my boss to pay for health insurance—and said he had a famous and rich client who happened to be my brother, the young editors were jealous. The lawyer refused to tell me the brother's name, so my colleagues began to guess. The name John Travolta was mentioned most often. But I was hoping for someone like Henry James—someone more talented than me, someone naturally gifted.
When I met Steve he was an Arab or Jewish looking man in jeans about my age. He was more handsome than Omar Sharif. We went for a long walk, which we both coincidentally loved so much. I don't remember too much what we said to each other that first day. I just remember that I felt that he was the one I would choose as a friend. He told me he was into computers. I didn't know much about computers, I was still writing on a manual typewriter. I told Steve that I was considering buying my first computer. Steve told me it was a good thing I waited. He is said to be working on something extraordinarily great.
I'd like to share with you a few things I've learned from Steve over the 27 years I've known him. It is about three periods, three periods of life. His whole life. His illness. His dying.
Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard, every day. It sounds simple, but it's true. He was never ashamed of working so hard, even when he wasn't doing well. When someone as smart as Steve wasn't ashamed to admit failure, maybe I didn't have to either.
When he was fired from Apple, it was very painful. He told me about a dinner with the future president to which 500 Silicon Valley leaders were invited and to which he was not invited. It hurt him, but he still went to work at Next. He continued to work every day.
The greatest value for Steve was not innovation, but beauty. For an innovator, Steve was fiercely loyal. If he liked one T-shirt, he would order 10 or 100. There were so many black turtlenecks in the house in Palo Alto that they would probably be enough for everyone in the church. He was not interested in current trends or trends. He liked people his own age.
His aesthetic philosophy reminds me of one of his statements, which went something like this: “Fashion is what looks great now but is ugly later; art may be ugly at first, but later it becomes great.”
Steve always went for the latter. He didn't mind being misunderstood.
At NeXT, where he and his team were quietly developing a platform on which Tim Berners-Lee could write a program for the World Wide Web, he always drove the same black sports car. He bought it for the third or fourth time.
Steve constantly talked about love, which was a core value for him. She was essential to him. He was interested and concerned about the love lives of his co-workers. As soon as he came across a man he thought I might like, he would immediately ask: "You're single? Do you want to go to dinner with my sister?”
I remember him calling the day he met Lauren. "There is a wonderful woman, she is very smart, she has such a dog, I will marry him one day."
When Reed was born, he became even more sentimental. He was there for each of his children. He wondered about Lisa's boyfriend, about Erin's travels and the length of her skirts, about Eva's safety around the horses she adored so much. None of us who attended Reed's graduation will ever forget their slow dance.
His love for Lauren never stopped. He believed that love happens everywhere and all the time. Most importantly, Steve was never ironic, cynical or pessimistic. This is something I am still trying to learn from him.
Steve was successful at a young age and felt that it isolated him. Most of the choices he made during the time I knew him were trying to break down those walls around him. A townie from Los Altos falls in love with a townie from New Jersey. The education of their children was important to both of them, they wanted to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as normal children. Their house wasn't full of art or tinsel. In the early years, they often only had simple dinners. One type of vegetable. There were a lot of vegetables, but only one kind. Like broccoli.
Even as a millionaire, Steve picked me up at the airport every time. He was standing here in his jeans.
When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linneta would answer: “Your dad is at a meeting. Should I interrupt him?”
Once they decided to remodel the kitchen. It took years. They cooked on a tabletop stove in the garage. Even the Pixar building, which was being built at the same time, was completed in half the time. Such was the house in Palo Alto. The bathrooms remained old. Still, Steve knew it was a great house to start with.
However, this is not to say that he did not enjoy success. He enjoyed it, a lot. He told me how he loved coming to a bike shop in Palo Alto and happily realizing he could afford the best bike there. And so he did.
Steve was humble, always eager to learn. He once told me that if he had grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about universities, how he loved walking around Stanford's campus.
In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he did not know before, and thought about what could inspire people on the future walls of Apple's new campus.
Steve was very interested at all. What other CEO knew the history of English and Chinese tea roses and had David Austin's favorite rose?
He kept hiding surprises in his pockets. I dare say Laurene is still discovering these surprises - the songs he loved and the poems he cut out - even after 20 years of a very close marriage. Steve had a lot of fun with his four kids, his wife, all of us. He valued happiness.
Then Steve got sick and we watched his life shrink into a small circle. He loved walking around Paris. He liked to ski. He skied clumsily. It's all gone. Even common pleasures like a good peach no longer appealed to him. But what amazed me the most during his illness was how much was still left after how much he had lost.
I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After a liver transplant, he stood up on legs that couldn't even support him and grabbed a chair with his hands. With that chair, he walked down the hallway of the Memphis hospital to the nurses' room, sat there, rested for a while, and then walked back. He counted his steps and took a little more each day.
Laurene encouraged him: "You can do it, Steve."
During this terrible time, I realized that she was not suffering all this pain for herself. He had his goals set: his son Reed's graduation, Erin's trip to Kyoto, and the delivery of the ship he was working on and planned to sail around the world with his whole family, where he hoped to spend the rest of his life with Laurene one day.
Despite his illness, he retained his taste and judgment. He went through 67 nurses until he found his soul mates and three stayed with him until the very end: Tracy, Arturo and Elham.
Once, when Steve had a bad case of pneumonia, the doctor forbade him everything, even ice. He was lying in a classic intensive care unit. Although he didn't usually do this, he admitted that he would like to be given special treatment this time. I told him: “Steve, this is a special treat.” He leaned towards me and said: "I'd like it to be a little more special."
When he couldn't speak, he at least asked for his notepad. He was designing an iPad holder in a hospital bed. He designed new monitoring equipment and x-ray equipment. He repainted his hospital room, which he didn't like very much. And every time his wife walked into the room, he had a smile on his face. You wrote the really big things in a pad. He wanted us to disobey the doctors and give him at least a piece of ice.
When Steve was better, he tried, even during his last year, to fulfill all the promises and projects at Apple. Back in the Netherlands, workers were getting ready to lay the wood on top of the beautiful steel hull and complete the construction of his ship. His three daughters remain single, with him wishing he could lead them down the aisle as he once led me. We all end up dying in the middle of the story. Amid many stories.
I suppose it's not right to call the death of someone who has lived with cancer for several years unexpected, but Steve's death was unexpected to us. I learned from my brother's death that the most important thing is character: he died as he was.
He called me Tuesday morning, wanted me to come to Palo Alto as soon as possible. His voice sounded kind and sweet, but also as if he already had his bags packed and was ready to go, although he was very sorry to leave us.
When he started to say goodbye, I stopped him. "Wait, I'm going. I'm sitting in a taxi heading to the airport," I said. "I'm telling you now because I'm afraid you won't make it in time," he replied.
When I arrived, he was joking with his wife. Then he looked into his children's eyes and couldn't tear himself away. It wasn't until two o'clock in the afternoon that his wife managed to talk Steve into talking to his friends from Apple. Then it became clear that he would not be with us for long.
His breath changed. He was laborious and deliberate. I felt that she was counting her steps again, that she was trying to walk even further than before. I assumed he was working on this as well. Death did not meet Steve, he achieved it.
When he said goodbye, he told me how sorry he was that we wouldn't be able to grow old together the way we always planned, but that he was going to a better place.
Dr. Fischer gave him a fifty percent chance of surviving the night. He managed her. Laurene spent the entire night by his side, waking whenever there was a pause in his breathing. We both looked at each other, he just took a long gasp and breathed in again.
Even at this moment, he maintained his seriousness, the personality of a romantic and an absolutist. His breath suggested a arduous journey, a pilgrimage. It looked like he was climbing.
But apart from his will, his work commitment, what was amazing about him was how he was able to get excited about things, like an artist trusting his idea. That stayed with Steve for a long time
Before he left for good, he looked at his sister Patty, then a long look at his children, then at his life partner, Lauren, and then looked off into the distance beyond them.
Steve's last words were:
OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.
Source: NYTimes.com
Well, it's sad, but again I learned a bit about Steve, what he was like, what he liked, what he liked to do, even though I didn't know him personally, I respect him, if only because this "story" reminded me of the situation that happened going on in our family now.
So that's power…
Shouldn't the word Sister be removed from the title? Or replace it with the word Writer. On the one hand, it will give the impression that it is some rank and file, possibly a nurse, and on the other hand, the forum with the brother's identity is revealed. And thirdly, it's just terribly stupid :D
Interesting…
Thanks for the great translation.
Damn, what correctly put together words can do... I didn't know that person at all, actually it's about to be stolen from me! Instead, when I read it, I have a terribly nagging feeling, as if I had lost someone close to me. But it will probably be a little different - that sizzling feeling won't just be about this great article on Jablickari... I just miss Steve!
Somehow I didn't get it OH WOW
Thanks for reading, nicely written.
Thomas:
Perhaps he had already seen a better place and was mesmerized by its beauty.
Probably yes :-)
That's power, I read it in the original, but your translation impressed me much more. Just a blast...
Pathos. Please translate something about apple. I need to know how the battery lasts for the 4s.
Thank you very much for the translation, I tried to read it in English, but I couldn't do much, so I thought: "they will definitely translate it at the apple store" and it did.
Really great translation, just like Hobbo, I had the feeling that someone close to me was leaving me.. I'm looking forward to the book :)