It est entree dans mon coeur une part de bonheur dont je connais la cause. C'est lui pour moi moi pour lui, dans la vie
- La Vie en Rose
Joan FitzGerald, who died peacefully at her home on Dublin's leafy Palmerston Road last weekend aged 76 was, as was reiterated in tribute after tribute and at her thronged funeral service, a wonderful wife and mother. Family was the axis on which her life turned. The fact that from that vantage point - not one normally associated with empowerment in Irish society - she also managed to be one of the most outstanding people of her generation and a remarkable influence on political life, perfectly illustrates what a true original she was.
If life is composed of the passive and the players Mrs FitzGerald was firmly in the latter camp.
The secret was her symbiotic relationship with Dr Garret FitzGerald. From their marriage in 1947, on through the rollercoaster ride that took them through his days in Aer Lingus, academia and on to the Department of Foreign Affairs and his two terms as Taoiseach, he saw his career as their joint career. It was a partnership approach to marriage that flowed seamlessly from their love for one another.
Born in Liverpool in 1923 of Irish parents, her early childhood was blighted by the mental illness of her father Charles O'Farrell, a colonial civil servant with roots in east Galway, whose illness may have been a legacy of malaria contracted while serving in west Africa. Her mother, Frances Brenan, was the daughter of a brewer who was a friend of Parnell. She was one of seven sisters, another of whom, Emily Brenan - " Auntie Ba" - kept things on course for her niece and god-daughter Joan and her family when Charles O'Farrell had to be permanently hospitalised.
A Cambridge graduate, Emily Brenan was an economist with the League of Nations in Geneva. It was when living with her there that the then Joan O'Farrell learned her impeccable French. Returning to Dublin at the age of 10 she went to school in Sion Hill and on to UCD, her home ground as she called it, where she met Dr FitzGerald in what was always known as "86" on St Stephen's Green. It was at the college "hops" that he got to know her better, in spite of his being a rotten dancer. When Dr FitzGerald, an inveterate war watcher as a student, heard the news that Germany had surrendered in 1945, it was with her he celebrated.
Probably because her childhood had been so unhappy, Mrs FitzGerald would go to the ends of the earth to ensure her children, John, Mary and Mark, her grandchildren and their friends were feted and loved to the nth degree. A friend recalled this week how rushing up to Palmerston Road to share the latest bit of chit-chat with her, Mrs FitzGerald - though insatiably interested - would instinctively hone in first on the child you'd brought in your wake: what was his French exchange really like?; how had the ballet display gone? If a child asked for a juice that the FitzGerald's didn't have in the kitchen - a rare occurrence - a directive was issued: whatever it was would be got for next time. Top priority.
Inevitably her grandchildren, Doireann, Iseult, Aoife, Reachbha, Sorcha, Ciara, Garret, Erinne, Laoise and baby Meadhbh, adored her. Their grief was one of the most touching aspects of her funeral.
Mrs FitzGerald's much mentioned dislike of politics and initial disinclination for Dr FitzGerald to go into it belied her astute political intuition. She had, after all, studied politics, albeit as a subsidiary subject, in college. Credited with being instrumental in various political appointments like that of Muiris MacConghail to the Government Information Service and Peter Sutherland as European Commissioner, perhaps her suggestion of Jim Dooge as Foreign Minister best indicates her political nous. Though Professor Dooge wasn't even a member of the Oireachtas at the time and had to be constitutionally qualified for the portfolio by being nominated to the Senate, Mrs FitzGerald knew that he was the one person to whom her husband would be willing to delegate responsibility in a sensitive area such as a-vis the crisis in Northern Ireland; EC involvement and so on. It was Mrs FitzGerald, as Dr FitzGerald acknowledges in his autobiography, All in a Life, who recognised that with anyone else in the position he would have been tempted to adopt an unduly hands-on approach .
It was this kind of intuitive wisdom, the value of which Dr FitzGerald saw, that was the hallmark of her indirect contribution to Irish political life. Her interest in theology, her deep awareness of European culture, and her social conscience gave conviction to the strong views she was never afraid of airing.
One such occasion was when she briefed Chancellor Helmut Schmidt so well in a pre-dinner chat on the Irish economy that he cancelled the formal briefing planned for later.
After overcoming her fear of flying which led her husband at one point early on to promise to travel by sea and land - a promise he kept for 14 years - she took to the air with gusto and frequently accompanied him abroad .
She was indeed as she said "doing my own thing for my country ".
Mrs FitzGerald the hostess was another of her myriad roles, most famously at the annual New Year's Eve party, a tradition which began at a dinner in her home on Booterstown Avenue with Elizabeth Lovatt Dolan and her late husband, John, and Mairtin and Mary McCullough, when they were all newly married. Mrs FitzGerald delighted in Christmas. She had memories of how beautiful Christmas-time had been in Geneva as a child and the FitzGerald's tree - always huge with real candles - was something to behold. Friends recall wonderful children's parties with elaborate quizzes set by Dr FitzGerald tacked to the walls of the corridors and stairs of the house on Eglinton Road where they lived when their children were growing up. In John and Mary's teenage years many a post-mortem took place on Mrs FitzGerald's bed in the front room in Eglinton Road after parties and Old Belvedere dances. Sandwiches would be provided at midnight by Mrs O'Farrell, Mrs FitzGerald's mother who lived in the house. Because of Mrs FitzGerald's illness, lymphodoemia - exacerbated by arthritis - she increasingly spent time in bed but that did not stop the stream of visitors. Quite the opposite.
Probably the most dramatic caller was Jim Mitchell, when, as Minister for Justice, he felt compelled regularly to arrive in the FitzGerald's bedroom late at night to give urgent briefings on security matters. In the last years guests got used to the dinner parties in the front upstairs bedroom of Palmerston Road with lively interjections from Mrs FitzGerald in her special bed pulled alongside the table.
When Dr FitzGerald's political career was in full flight she might have gone to bed before he came home - but never to sleep so she'd be available to listen to trial runs of his speeches. "A lot of talking goes on after the lights go out," she once said. "It's not good for politicians to come home to adoring wives. They need criticism", was her maxim.
Friends recall she had a beautiful singing voice and old favourites were Mon Beau Sapin at Christmas-time and the classic, La Vie en Rose, quoted above, made famous by Edith Piaf. Among the last festive occasions in which she participated were the christenings of her two youngest grandchildren. These took place in Palmerston Road so she could be at the heart of them. Her son, John, speaking to the congregation at her funeral, recalled that this prompted the smaller children to talk about the day "the christening man" came to the house. He added that his mother was a person who simply did not recognise boundaries between generations. There were the annual picnics held in various parts of Wicklow, the smaller children thrilled to be allowed help cook rashers and sausages on camp fires: the excitement heightened for them when Dr FitzGerald was Taoiseach by the discreet presence of the Special Branch keeping watch on the horizon.
Because so much of her husband's time was given to public life holidays were hugely important: in Kelly's Hotel, Rosslare, when the children were small; in Croix de Vie in the Vendee area of France when they were teenagers; in Les Arcs in the south of France with friends; at Mitterrand's residence, Fort of Bregancon, near Toulon and, most recently, in Schull in west Cork. They often stayed at the home of their friends, Gay and Jacinta Hogan, where from her bed by the lawn Mrs FitzGerald could see the sea. Her son, Mark, had just begun a nostalgic return holiday to Croix de Vie with his own family when he heard of his mother's death.
Dr FitzGerald was with her when she died, giving to the last that same unconditional love that he offered when he first pursued her in UCD over half a century ago and which, as all their friends knew, was a unique privilege to watch .
Joan FitzGerald: born 1923: died June,1999.