Jade in her own words - part two
Monday 23 March 2009
Jade once said: “I never had a childhood really,” referring to the time she spent as a child taking care of her mum Jackiey Budden – a crack addict who’d been badly injured in a motorbike accident. “I never had that chance to be an idiot kid.”
She added: “Most of my mates at school would arrive home to see their mum hanging out the washing or putting the dinner on. I’d come round the corner, face in hands, hoping not to see another police car outside the house.”
But as Jackiey cleaned herself up, Jade eventually grew closer to her mum – who held a bedside vigil for her daughter throughout her final days.
Weeks before she died, Jade said: “I’ve forgiven my mum for what she did to me. I really love her dearly.”
Before dying, she also made her peace with dad Andrew Goody by visiting his grave.
He’d spent most of his daughter’s life as a drug addict, in and out of prison – his longest stretch being for armed robbery. He was found dead in 2005 in the toilets of a KFC restaurant in Bournemouth.
Despite initially calling his death a “relief,” in her autobiography Jade wrote: “I sit there staring at the sky sometimes and it makes me cry. I seem to think my dad’s up there, in the stars, watching me. I need to make peace with him, and with myself.”
And last year, after her cancer diagnosis, she did.
“I suddenly felt a desperate urge to make amends for all the traumas in my life,” she said. “I wanted to see my estranged brother and finally visit my dad’s grave.”
Although Jade did visit the grave in east London, she wasn’t reconciled with her estranged half-brother, Brett Luckens, who now lives in Australia.
Despite suffering the symptoms of cancer for three years, Jade was tested for ovarian cancer in 2004 and bowel cancer in 2006 and was given the all-clear.
But last August, when she was on the Indian version of Big Brother, producers called her to the diary room and broke the devastating news.
The distraught mum-of-two had undergone hospital tests earlier in the month after four mystery collapses.
Speaking for the first time after the diagnosis, distraught Jade said: “I’ve no control over this disease and I’m terrified.”
But determined to stay positive, she added: “I’m going to fight the damn thing every step of the way because I have two beautiful boys who are my world.
“But I have to be realistic that I might not see them grow up.”
However, as she rushed back to England to have more tests, she received the bombshell that her cancer had spread.
As she was wheeled into theatre for a hysterectomy, she joked to nurses in typical Jade style: “Don’t turn me into a man – I don’t want a sex change, OK?”
In the weeks that followed, her tearful reaction to losing her hair as a result of chemo was filmed for her Living TV documentary, which showed her sobbing as she caught a glimpse of her balding head in the mirror.
“Oh no Mummy, no,” she cried, as Jackiey tried to comfort her. “It looks like I’ve got cancer.”
But through her faith, she said she found the strength to deal with her ordeal.
She admitted: “I believe in heaven and spirits, so I’m not scared of dying. I want to
believe in something. I pray every time I to go to bed.”
She added: “If there’s one thing I look forward to about dying, it’s that I’ll be able to look down on my family and continue to be a part of their lives. I’ll be there in Jeff’s ear saying: ‘Put the aftershave on the boys before school!’”
As she bravely battled the disease, she admitted: “I also want to be remembered as the girl who put up a fight and would never let herself get beaten down.
“I was given a death sentence, but I didn’t let it kill me. I fought it, got married, got christened. I’m happy. I achieved more in just 27 years than some achieve in a lifetime.”
She had a history of failed relationships, so when Jade started dating Essex boy Jack Tweed three and a half years ago, people wondered if this new relationship could last.
But the couple proved their devotion by getting married just a week after Jade was told her cancer was terminal.
After her lavish wedding, Jade said: “I’m not scared of dying any more.
“I’ve had the happiest day of my life so I’m ready to go to heaven.”
She added: “I’m so happy. I have married the man I love and all the people I love were there to see me do it.”
Brave Jade also praised her husband – quashing any suggestions that he was after her money.
She said: “Everything I have, my house and my money is going to my sons. Jack wants this as much as me. I offered him my Essex house to live in, but he refused, saying he couldn’t stay there without me. And that he would be looking for me in every corner and didn’t want to be there if I wasn’t.
“He’s been a brilliant dad and I’m just sorry I could never give him his own child.”