Jimmy

Let me begin by giving a huge shoutout to our daughter Gwendoline, Joëlle’s sister Anne, and Joëlle’s hermana, Lily, who provided tireless 24-hour care to Joëlle in the last and sometimes difficult month that she was with us. Anne, who had made two previous lengthy trips from France here to support Joëlle, lived with us for the last month and Lily even longer. Gwendoline and Clay were each at our home several hours a day and frequently spent the night sleeping by her side. I know that so many of you who became aware of Joëlle’s situation in the last days deeply regretted that there wasn’t something you could do for her. Rest assured the care she received couldn’t have been better or more lovingly provided. I unfortunately cannot here recite the names of the many other people who played a role in Joëlle’s final months, but I do want to give a special thanks to Joëlle’s sister, Armelle, who made two extended trips here from France to be with her.

Secondly, I have to give a shoutout to the person who organized and executed the logistics for this funeral on five days notice just before the holidays. I just looked this morning at a spreadsheet of action items just for yesterday and today that had 50 entries assigned to various family members, although 70% of them he assigned to himself. It didn’t hurt that at an earlier point in his life this person was largely responsible for organizing Obama’s second Inauguration. The person I am speaking of is, of course, our son Clay, of whom Joëlle was  immensely proud.

Joëlle touched so many children and families through her thirty-three years with Ecole Claire Fontaine that she stood on a pedestal for literally thousands of people. For so many, she was that charismatic woman with the big heart who made a community in Venice Beach out of life’s most exhilarating and exhausting activity: raising small children. Gwendo, Clay, and I have received well over a thousand messages in the last few days from people who participated as children, parents, teachers, or community colleagues in this grand endeavor. Don’t look to me to add to this chorus. It leaves me speechless.  

The message that I myself would like to add is simply that I hope we will not soon forget the human being whose likeness stands on that pedestal. Anyone who came in contact with her felt that there was something that set her very much apart, although each of you doubtless have your own takes on what that was. Treasure the raw memories of your time with her.

The late-life grandmother of her public persona was once a mesmerizing young woman of breath-taking beauty. Born in Marrakech, the third of six high-spirited and individualistic children, of two parents of limited formal education but enormous talent, energy, and personal courage. Her father, Alain Guilloux, had run away from home at age 15, and had left France for Morocco to enlist in the French army at 18. He retired as a much-decorated colonel after fighting in Belgium, Italy, Indochina, and Algeria, suffering grievous wounds each time and eventually losing a leg. Her Casablanca-born mother, Jacqueline Guilloux, née Bencivengo,  was as strong-minded a woman as I have ever met, and with one other person, the strongest influence on the woman Joëlle became. She laid down the template for the Joëlle who was both tireless in her endeavors and unrepentantly her own person. The other great influence, the talented and deeply eccentric architect, Charles Péré-Lahaille, Joëlle’s partner for twelve years and the father of Gwendoline, was every bit the match for Jacqueline in strong-mindedness and furious energy. To the consternation of Joelle’s mother, he liberated her from the constraints she felt from her family and gave her a vision of what it was to build something in the great world. 

If there was one word to describe Jacqueline and Charles, and which one would certainly apply to Joëlle, it was that they were fearless. Call it optimism, bloody-mindedness, or a simple inability to back down, they forged ahead. En avant was the only direction that Joëlle ever knew.

The full history of the lives of Alain, Jacqueline, and Charles, and Joëlle’s life with them before she came to  America at age 34, is a chronicle of adventure and conflict whose details are so rich that to discuss them at all is to jump down a rabbit hole.

Even more the stuff of a novel brimming with passion, conflict, and suspense, is the part of the story where America, Venice Beach, and I enter into the picture. From my first chance meeting with the stunning and deeply enigmatic person that Joëlle was in August, 1984, through our fraught, long-distance courtship, to our wedding on two weeks' notice in front of 150 people in August,1985. And then on to Joëlle’s discovery of Venice and the great era of what everyone in our burgeoning group of friends called the Pink House. La Maison Rose. Although it has long since ceased to be pink, it is still sitting there next to the Camper Campus in all of its architectural glory (although it is, to Joelle’s eternal regret, owned by someone else).

And on through more than three decades of highs and lows living at the beach and building Ecole Claire Fontaine. 

Many of you here today came to know Joëlle at some point over the course of this rich history but for those of you who only came to know her more recently, I can only say that the devil and the beauty is in the details, in which I can too easily get lost, but which in the days to come I will do my best to organize and share with you.

How does one become larger than life? How does a story become more than the sum of its parts? Joëlle was a riot of idiosyncrasies, rough edges very much included, who somehow came together as a whole of enormous force and charm. She was not the product of anyone’s expectations or a follower in any sense of the word. She never claimed that anyone had ever held her back and she took it for granted that we were all 100% responsible for our own paths in life. She had no instinct for self-abnegation and took pride in spending every day doing exactly what she wanted. It just so happened that the pursuit of exactly what she wanted was accompanied by enormous discipline and capacity for work, deep natural empathy for others, and an ability to shrewdly and relentlessly pursue long term goals. She had a photographic memory for the telling details of all our stories. She followed up with us and made so many of us feel that she uniquely understood us. And yet she protested, and I can attest, that she enjoyed nothing more than her solitude. For six or seven months out of the year she would rise as early as 5:30 in the morning to get to the beach for an hour and a half of solo body surfing. 

At another funeral, you could say that these are just the ravings of a husband who never stopped being besotted with his wife. But look around you. Hundreds of people can attest to what I am saying. 

One of the several buttons you could push with Joëlle to get a predictable response was to say something like, “I think you’d really enjoy spending an afternoon taking a walk with me on the beach.” To which she would respond with some variation on: “Don’t think for me. If I would really enjoy doing something, I’ll let you know.” She probably wanted to take a walk with you on the beach, but posing the question to her that way was a capital offense.

So you can imagine what she would have to say about someone standing in front of the largest crowd of her family and friends ever assembled and making these kinds of pronouncements about her. But, so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time that I braved her wrath. 

Joëlle was extremely private about her illness. Not just with you. Although I went with her to all of her many medical appointments, discussion of her prognosis was verboten. And only once did we discuss what life for me might look like if she were no longer there. While we were in the waiting room before her very last CT Scan she turned to me and told me out of the blue that in my “life to come” I would become “famous.” I puzzled over this characteristically enigmatic statement which I knew had not been said ironically, since however full of humor she was, she was never ironic. As with much communication between us over the years, the space between whatever was going through her head when she said something important to me, and what I would come to understand, contained a garden in which flowers of wisdom would grow to be plucked when their blossoms finally appeared.

When we would go walking, if Joelle saw a flower in someone’s garden she liked, she just plucked it and it became hers. I am naturally more hesitant, knowing that the garden is not mine and that, once plucked, the poor flower can only belong to me. But Joelle’s comment that I would be famous is a flower that I now gladly pluck. She did not mean that I should turn away from the horror of her passing. To be beset by the horror of her passing was simply not a state of mind she could conceive of for anyone. What she meant was simply this: look to yourself and fear not. Big things await you if you seek them out. And you will seek them out. 

I think that if Joëlle were here today in front of so many friends and so many parents of small children, her message would be simply this: fear not. The best is yet to come.