乔布斯妹妹的悼词

[中][英]乔布斯妹妹的悼词：点滴平常却触动人心的故事

此文为乔布斯的妹妹、小说家梦娜·辛普森在 10 月 16 日位于斯坦福大学纪念教堂举办的乔布斯道别仪式上发表的悼词。原文发表于《纽约时报》。 先中文，后英文原文。

文 / Mona Simpson

我是家中的独生女，跟单身母亲长大。父亲是叙利亚移民，小时候我们家很穷，由于这两个原因，我把他想像成奥玛·沙里夫的样子 [1] 。当时我希望他早日发达，然后大发善心，拯救我们那家徒四壁的生活。终于遇到了父亲之后，我尽量说服自己相信他是一个密谋为阿拉伯人民建立新世界的理想主义革命分子，所以才要改头换面。

虽然身为女性主义者，但我一辈子都在等待一个值得我爱，也爱我的男人。几十年来，我一直觉得父亲就是那个男人。25 岁那年，我遇到了他，我的哥哥。

那时我住在纽约，正在写第一本小说。我在一家小杂志社上班，办公室比衣柜大不了多少，连我一共坐了四个人，都是充满抱负的文学青年。一天，我接到一位律师打来的电话，说他一个富有而显赫的客户是我失散多年的哥哥──当时的我还是一个加州来的中产女生，整天缠着老板给我买医保。年轻的编辑们沸腾了。那是 1985年，我们编的是一本前卫文学杂志，而我却仿佛进入了狄更斯小说中的情节。（说真的，我们最爱的还是那些小说。）律师没有透露我哥哥的名字，于是同事们打起赌来。得票最多的是约翰·屈伏塔（John Travolta）。内心深处我暗暗希望他是一个能在文学上继承亨利·詹姆斯的传统的人：一个才华比我高、举重若轻的作家。

我第一次见到史蒂夫时，他跟我差不多大，穿着牛仔裤，阿拉伯或犹太长相，比奥玛·沙里夫更帅。

我们一起散步，走了很久——他和我一样喜欢散步。我不太记得那天说了什么，只记得他让人感觉是那种我会愿意与之做朋友的人。他花了些时间向我解释自己是做电脑的。 当时我不太了解电脑。我还在用 Olivetti 牌的手动打字机。 我跟史蒂夫说打算买一台 Cromemco 型号的电脑。

史蒂夫说妳等到现在是对的。他说他正在做的电脑会漂亮到爆。

我想跟各位分享自己从史蒂夫那里学到的一些东西。我认识他 27 年，其中可以分为三个时期。不是按年来分，是按生存状态：人生完整的时期、与病魔战斗的时期、垂死时期。 史蒂夫只做他热爱的事。他工作极其努力，天天如此。 这话说来无比简单，但也无比真实。 他是三心二意的对立面。

他不会为努力工作而感到尴尬，哪怕结果是失败。如果像史蒂夫这么聪明的人都不会耻于承认自己的努力曾经失败，或许我也不必感到羞耻。

他被踢出苹果后非常痛苦。我听他提到过一场晚宴，嘉宾包括五百名硅谷领袖，以及当时的总统。没有人邀请他。

他很受伤，但仍然去 NeXT 上班。天天如此。 史蒂夫最大的价值不在于新，而在于美。

有一点很特别：以一个创新者而言，史蒂夫并不喜新厌旧。如果他喜欢某件衣服，就会订上十件、一百件。在他帕洛奥托家中的黑色圆领羊毛衫的数量大概足够分给这间教堂里每人一件。

他不喜欢一时的潮流或是奇技淫巧。他喜欢同龄人。

他的美学理念让我想到一句话：「初看美丽，随后变丑的，是时尚；初看或许丑陋，但随后显示出美的，是艺术。」

史蒂夫总是希望创造出那种「随后显示出美」的东西。 他不介意被误解。

他没有得到晚宴邀请，便开着黑色跑车去 NeXT 工作，他一直开同一款跑车，那辆已经是第三还是第四代了。在 NeXT 的办公室里，他和团队静静地创造着。多年以后，添姆·伯纳斯-李在他们发明的电脑上写下了万维网的代码。

史蒂夫谈论爱情时像个小女生。爱是他的最高美德，他的众神之神。他会关注同事的感情生活，为他们操心。

每当他看到他认为会受女性欢迎的男性时，就会直接了当地问：「兄弟，有女朋友吗？要不要跟我妹妹一起吃饭？」

记得他遇到劳伦那天打电话给我。「我遇到一个美女，无比聪明，养了只狗，我要娶她。」 里德出生时，他开始滔滔不绝，从未停止。他是个实打实的父亲，对每个孩子都如此。他操心丽萨的男友，艾琳的出游计划和裙子的长度，以及伊芙跟她喜爱的马匹玩耍时的安全问题。 我们这些参加过里德毕业派对的人一辈子也忘不了里德和史蒂夫父子两人慢舞的场面。 他对劳伦的爱矢志不渝，这份爱成了维系他的动力。他相信爱无时、无处不在。这是最重要的一点。了解了这点，你就会知道史蒂夫不刻薄、不犬儒、不悲观，从不。我一直试图学习这点，直到现在。

史蒂夫年轻时就已名利双收，他认为这一点令他与众人孤立。自我认识他以来，他做的大多数决定都是为了溶解身边的这堵墙。一个来自洛斯奥托的中产男生，爱上了一个来自新泽西的中产女生，两人知道，必须把丽萨、里德、艾琳和伊芙培养成脚踏实地的普通人。他们家没有让人产生距离感的艺术品或装饰物。事实上，我最初认识史蒂夫和劳伦那几年，他们一直在草地上吃晚餐，有时整餐只吃一种蔬菜。分量很大，但除了蔬菜不吃别的。西兰花。季节性蔬菜。做法简单。还有刚刚摘下的新鲜香料。

虽然他年纪轻轻就已是百万富翁，但史蒂夫总是去机场接我，穿着牛仔裤站在那里。 如果上班时有家人打电话去，他的秘书琳奈塔会帮他接听，「你爸爸在开会。要我叫他吗？」

万圣节时，里德会要求打扮成巫师，这时史蒂夫、劳伦、艾琳和伊芙都会装成巫术世界里的角色。

有一次他们要重新装修厨房，最后花了几年才完工。其间他们在车库中用一块加热的铁盘做饭。同期动工的皮克斯大楼只花了一半时间。而且他们家只改了厨房而已。卫生间完全没有动过。但它一开始就是一栋非常棒的房子，史蒂夫花了很多心思。

并不是说他不享受成功；他非常享受，但程度上要减少几个零。他跟我说过自己最爱跑到帕洛奥托的单车店里得意地想：这里最好的单车我也买得起。 然后他买了。

史蒂夫很谦和。史蒂夫喜欢不断学习。

有一次他说，如果成长经历不同的话，他或许会去当数学家。他说到大学时非常尊敬，很爱在斯坦福校园中漫步。生命中最后几年，他开始思考苹果的新总部大楼的墙上应该挂什么东西才能激发员工灵感，于是开始研读一本关于马克·罗斯科（Mark Rothko）的绘画的专著。在那以前，他不知道罗斯科是谁。

史蒂夫的性格中有趣致的一面。还有哪个 CEO 会熟知英国和中国茶玫瑰的历史，还能说出自己最喜欢的大卫·奥斯丁玫瑰的品种？

他充满了惊喜。虽然两人已经做了二十年日夜相对的夫妻，我敢打赌劳伦经常会收到他的各种充满心思的小礼物——喜爱的歌曲、剪下放在抽屉里的诗歌等等。我几乎隔天就会跟他倾谈几句，但打开《纽约时报》看到关于苹果某项专利的报道时，还是会对着一条完美楼梯的素描惊叹。

史蒂夫跟他的四个孩子、妻子以及我们所有人一起度过了许多快乐的时光。 他珍视幸福。

后来，史蒂夫病了，他的生活压缩到一个很小的圈子当中。他一度喜欢在巴黎漫步，在京都寻找小巧精致的手工荞麦麵馆。他擅长高山滑雪，越野滑雪则较为笨拙。这些都已是过去时。 直到有一天，即便是普通的乐趣——例如一只美味的桃子，也很难引起他的兴致。 但令我吃惊的是，即便上帝夺走了他的那么多，剩下的仍然如此丰盛。这是我从他的疾病中学到的。

我记得哥哥借助椅子开始重新学习走路的过程。肝脏移植手术之后，他的腿瘦得像是无法支撑上半身。每天他都会用双手撑着椅背尝试站立，推着椅子沿着孟菲斯医院的走廊一直走到护士站，然后在椅子上坐下稍作休息，转身，再往回走。他会数自己的步数，每天都数，每天多走几步。

劳伦跪在他面前，看着他的眼睛。

「你可以的，史蒂夫，」她说。他的眼睛张大了一点，双唇紧闭。

他在尝试。他从来不会放弃尝试，从来不会。爱，永远是他的各种努力的核心。他是一个极度情感化的人。

在那段可怕的日子里，我意识到史蒂夫并不是为他自己在忍受这些痛苦。他为自己设定了目标：儿子里德高中毕业，女儿艾琳的京都之旅，他一直在建一艘船，打算带着家人出海环游世界，他希望自己和劳伦退休之后能在这船上生活。

即时是在病中，他对品味的坚持、对事物的区别对待和判断也丝毫不改。他从 67 个护士中选出了三个气质近似的，并完全信任这三人，她们一直陪伴他到临终：翠西（Tracy）、亚图萝（Arturo）、爱兰（Elham）。

有一次，史蒂夫染上了严重的肺炎，医生嘱咐他绝对不能进食——连冰也不行。我们待在一间标准的重症监护室里。史蒂夫一般不喜欢插队或是靠自己的名字来争取些什么，不过这次，他说他希望能够得到特别对待。 我说：史蒂夫，这就是特别对待了。 他靠过来说：「我想要再特别一点。」

他喉咙里插了管子不能说话时，会问我们要笔记本。他在本子上画出了一种在病床上支撑 iPad 的装置，还设计了新的流体监视器和 X 光设备。他把那间不够特别的重症监护室重新画了一遍。每次他妻子走进病房时，我都能看见他的脸上重现笑容。

相信我，对于那些真正非常重要的事，他会写在本子上，会经常翻查。必须这样。 他的意思是说，我们应该违背医生的嘱咐，给他一块冰吃。

我们都不知道会在重症监护室待多久。即便是他生命中的最后一年，只要情况稍有好转，史蒂夫就要构思新计划，并要求他在苹果的朋友们保证将它们完成。荷兰的几间造船厂造出了非常漂亮的不锈钢船体，就等着铺上木皮。三个女儿待字闺中，其中两个小女儿尚未长大成人。他已经见证了我的婚姻，现在想的是带领女儿们走向婚姻殿堂。 世间有许多故事，而我们最终都会在故事的一半死去。

死亡对于一个与癌症共同生活了许多年的人来说并不意外，但史蒂夫的死让我们感到意外。 哥哥的死让我懂得性格的重要性：他是什么样的人，就会以什么样的方式死去。

周二早晨，他打电话叫我快去帕洛奥托，声调亲切而充满关爱，但也像是一个已经把行李搬上车的人，一个即将开始旅行的人，虽然，他非常、真的非常舍不得离开我们。 他开始道别，我叫他不要再说。「等着，我现在过去。我在出租车上往机场走。等我。」 「我现在要跟妳说，因为我担心妳来不及了，亲爱的。」

我到的时候，他跟劳伦在一起说笑，像一对从出生以来就共同度过的伴侣。他看着孩子们的眼睛，仿佛无法将目光移开。

下午二时许，妻子将他唤醒，和苹果的朋友们聊天。 又过了一会，我们都清楚他不会再醒了。

他的呼吸变了，更加粗重，更加缓慢，一下，又一下。我能感觉到他又在数步数，每次多几步。

我明白了：即便是这样的时刻，他仍然在练习，在「工作」。并不是死神带走了史蒂夫，而是他达成了死亡。

弥留之际，他向我道别，他说他很遗憾，遗憾没能向计划好的那样和我一起变老。他说他要去更好的地方了。

费舍医生说他有一半几率度过今晚。

他度过了。守在床边的劳伦有时会因为他的呼吸暂停了较长时间而被吓到。我们互相看着，然后他又会长吸一口气，继续下去。

必须继续。即便那时，他的面容仍然坚决而英俊。那是一张绝对论者和浪漫派的面孔。他的呼吸表明他在进行一场艰苦的旅程，充满了陡峭的小径，和高度。 他似乎在往上爬。

但除了那样的意志、那样的工作伦理、那样的力量之外，史蒂夫还有令人惊讶的可爱一面，对理想的艺术家式的信念，以及那些「随后显示出美」的东西。 数小时后，史蒂夫说出了最后几个单词。全是单音节词，重复了三遍。

启程之前，他望了一眼妹妹帕缇（Patty），对着孩子们看了很长时间，然后凝视着他终生的伴侣劳伦，最后，朝她们身后望去。 史蒂夫最后的话是：

OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW. （翻译：李如一） —

1. Omar Sharif，埃及影星，主演过《阿拉伯的劳伦斯》、《日瓦格医生》等片。

October 30, 2011

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs By MONA SIMPSON

I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.

Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.

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.

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 want 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.

Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day. That’s incredibly simple, but true. He was the opposite of absent-minded.

He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.

When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited.

He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.

Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was.

For an innovator, 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.

He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.

His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”

Steve always aspired to make beautiful later. He was willing to be misunderstood.

Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.

Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.

Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”

I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.” When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.

None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.

His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.

Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that

one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.

Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans.

When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?”

When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.

They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.

This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there. And he did.

Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.

Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.

Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?

He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase. With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun. He treasured happiness.

Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more. Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.

Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.

I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther. Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.

“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.

He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.

I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.

Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.

One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.

I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.

He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”

Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.

For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.

By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice. None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous st

ainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.

We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.

What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.

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.” When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.

Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.

Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.

His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.

This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.

He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.

Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.

He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.

This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.

He seemed to be climbing.

But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later. 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.

Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.

This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.

He seemed to be climbing.

But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later. 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.

Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.

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