"You smell like a toilet!" Steve Jobs' shocking deathbed words to daughter reveal harsh truth about Apple founder
Lisa Brennan-Jobs and Steve Jobs' relationship was quite an extraordinary one, to say the least; while she was adamant to become a loving daughter, he struggled to accept that she was his child. Talking about their fair shares of ups and downs in her new memoir, 'Small Fry,' Lisa, opened up about the time she spent with her father.
After Steve was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Lisa made sure that she visited him every other month for the year. Speaking about one such visit in Vanity Fair’s September issue, Lisa recalled her father telling her that she "smelled like a toilet."
During this visit, Steve was so sick that he was unable to get out of his bed. However, Lisa made sure that every second she spent with her father was something she would remember. Just before leaving Lisa decided to spray rose facial mist she’d found in his bathroom.
“When we hugged, I could feel his vertebrae, his ribs. He smelled musty, like medicine sweat,” she wrote in her memoir. Lisa, now 40, turned to leave when Steve stopped her. “Lis?” he said.
“Yeah?” she asked.
“You smell like a toilet,” she remembered him saying. However, by this point, Lisa recalls that she had given up on “the possibility of a grand reconciliation, the kind in the movies” with Steve, who died at 56.
Lisa's mother, Chrisann Brennan had her in 1978 when Steve and she were 23. However, Steve denied that Lisa was his child until 1980 when the San Mateo district attorney forced him to take a paternity test and later, provide child support. As reported by New York Post, Steve was asked to cover child support of $385 per month.
This was later increased to $500 a month along with back payments, as well as, medical insurance until Lisa turned 18. Four days after the case was finalized, Steve's net worth became $200 million. Despite this, Lisa claims that he was stingy, aloof and curt with her. In fact, he even denied that he named one of the first computers he worked on, “The Lisa,” after her. However, it all changed when Lisa, who was 27 at that time was invited to join him on a yacht trip with her stepmother, three half-siblings, and a babysitter.
During their trip, Steve told Lisa that they would be making a stop to meet one of his friends. While he did not mention who he was initially, upon reaching the destination Lisa was shocked to find out that this friend was none other than Irish singer, Bono. Thanks to the singer, Lisa finally heard what she needed to know as Bono asked Steve, “So was the Lisa computer named after her?” While it was easy for Bono to ask that question, it wasn't that easy for Steve to accept it.
"My father hesitated, looked down at his plate for a long moment, and then back at Bono. ‘Yeah, it was,’ he said. I studied my father’s face. What had changed? Why had he admitted it now, after all these years? Of course, it was named after me, I thought then. His lie seemed preposterous now. I felt a new power that pulled my chest up," she wrote. Lisa then thanked the singer was asking Steve that question. "'That’s the first time he’s said yes,' I told Bono,” she recalled. "'Thank you for asking.' As if famous people needed other famous people around to release their secrets."