Author and UCLA professor Mona Simpson, the sister whom Steve Jobs didn’t know he had until they were both adults, breaks her silence about his death with a moving eulogy in Sunday’s New York Times. It’s the one she delivered at the private service for Jobs and includes her recounting of a long walk they took the day they first met:
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.
I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.
I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco.
Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.
I won’t give away what she says his last words were, but there’s this recollection of his phone call to her when he realized he was about to die:
Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.
He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”
“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”
