A Sister's Eulogy for Steve Jobs

In the days after Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011, the world received tributes from colleagues, competitors, and admirers across every corner of the technology and creative industries. But perhaps the most intimate portrait came from the person who knew him not as a CEO or visionary, but as a brother: his sister, the novelist Mona Simpson.

Simpson and Jobs shared a biological mother, Joanne Schieble, but had grown up apart — Jobs was adopted at birth by Paul and Clara Jobs, while Simpson was raised by their mother. They found each other as adults and, by her account, forged a genuine and deep sibling bond.

Simpson delivered a eulogy at Jobs' memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University on October 16, 2011. It was published in The New York Times on October 30 and read by millions around the world.

She described a man who loved with intensity and specificity — who paid close attention to the things and people that mattered to him, and who had little patience for those that didn't. She described his aesthetic obsessions, his difficulty with failure, and his extraordinary tenderness toward his children.

Most memorably, she described his final hours: "Steve's final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times. Before embarking, he'd looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life's partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve's final words were: 'Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.'"

Those three words became one of the most discussed elements of the entire Jobs obituary period — a final statement that resisted interpretation even as it invited it, and that seemed to fit, somehow, the sense that this was a man who met even his ending with something approaching wonder.