Jade Goody mum Jackiey Budden reveals how her tragic daughter sent her a message from heaven Exclusive by Alison Phillips
"I called to Jade: Why don’t you answer me. Then the clouds parted and I saw her face beaming down"
Jackiey Budden (pic: Rex)
In the garden of Jackiey Budden’s holiday apartment two perfect white butterflies flutter round and round in the sunshine.
Some days she spends hours just watching them dart around the purple bougainvillea flowers and every once in a while they skim past her face or settle on her chair as if taking a breather.
Jackiey knows exactly what those butterflies really are – the spirits of her daughter Jade and brother Budgie.
She says: “One of the butterflies is tiny and the other is big and I know it is Budgie playing with Jade just like he did when she was a little girl.”
It is now just over two months since Jade Goody died in the early hours of Mothering Sunday, holding Jackiey’s hand at home in Upshire, Essex. By then what began as cervical cancer had rampaged through her entire body, “smashing every organ” according to her mother.
Jackiey, 51, is spending a month in the Canary Isles trying to put the shattered fragments of her life back together following the loss of her only daughter.
She has spent many nights alone and sobbing, clutching the hospital gown Jade was wearing when she died which she now keeps inside her pillow.
But other days she feels stronger, inspired by the resilience and spirit of her grandsons – Jade’s beloved boys, Bobby, five, and Freddy, four.
One of the first things Jackiey did after arriving in the Canaries was to get a tattoo on her left foot of the verse from Jeremiah 33: “Call to me and I will answer.”
When she was in hospital Jade had stumbled across the line in her Bible and was deeply moved by it. She instructed all her friends to have the tattoo and said she would do the same. But by the time she came out of hospital she was far too poorly and Jackiey pledged to have it on her behalf.
Each day since arriving in the Canaries, Jackiey has called out to her daughter, desperately hoping for the answer she wanted to hear.
Then last Wednesday it came. Jackiey says: “I was laying on a sunbed outside my apartment and talking out loud, saying ‘Jade, you told me to call you and I am but you don’t answer’.
“And just then the clouds started moving and from the side of one of them I saw two faces looking down on me. It was Jade – totally clearly. She was beaming down and her hand was up as if she was waving. Her head was still bald but she looked so happy.
“At first I didn’t recognise the man next to her but slowly I realised it was Budgie who died when Jade was five. I broke down crying properly for the first time in ages.”
Jackiey also received another message from Jade shortly before leaving Britain. She says “I was coming home one evening and noticed my bathroom window was steamed up even though I’d been out.
“Then I saw in the steam was written ‘Light a candle for me Mum’. Now I have a candle by my front door lit every night so Jade knows I’m always thinking of her.”
Jackiey is still struggling to cope with raw feelings of loss and confusion that Jade could have been taken from her after just 27 years. Much of the time she still refers to her in the present tense.
Any consolation she does find is in knowing that at the end, she and Jade were as close as they had ever been.
Jade spoke many times of never having a childhood before entering the Big Brother house aged 20 because of her mum’s criminal past, then paralysis and finally a four year crack cocaine addiction. But from the point of Jade’s cancer diagnosis while starring in the Indian Big Brother last September, Jackiey was either at her daughter’s side or caring for Bobby and Freddy.
On March 11 Jade was allowed out of hospital to die at home. There she was cared for by Jackiey, her new husband Jack Tweed, close friend Kevin Adams and MacMillan nurses.
Jackiey explains: “We stopped all other visitors to preserve Jade’s dignity. Because Jade wasn’t just dying, she was disintegrating.
“She wasn’t scared of dying. She just didn’t want to die and for a while she wouldn’t even close her eyes because she thought she’d go in her sleep.
“Me, Jack and Kevin took it in turns to hold her hand and talk to her. By this stage she was on a really whacked up epidural for the pain which just got worse and worse. Sometime she would howl but straight away the nurses would give her an injection which just took her out of it.
“Other times she would be conscious and pain free and have really funny burst-outs.
“She’d shout ‘Mum, Mum’ and I’d be running into her room, huffing and puffing, saying ‘All right Jade, Mummy’s here’ and she’d look at me and say ‘You still here then?’ And we’d howl laughing.”
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As Jade’s illness progressed she also suffered hallucinations.
One of the most distressing incidents was when she imagined she was going through labour – and giving birth to the child she had miscarried in June 2007.
Jackiey says: “She went the whole way of giving birth and pushed the baby out then placed it in Jack’s arms. She told Jack ‘You’ll have to clean her up’ and then started screaming for me.
“When I walked into the room Jack was cradling the imaginary child which he handed gently to me.
“It was a heartbreaking moment because I knew how much my little girl had wanted a little girl of her own.
“Jack was amazing in those last weeks. He brushed Jade’s teeth, washed her body then creamed her afterwards.
“It even made the MacMillan nurses cry that a 21-year-old boy could care for his wife so gently and beautifully.
“For the last week all of us were saying ‘Go now Jade, you can go now’ because the longer she hung on the worse her pain became. The cancer had smashed up her entire body and she’d lost the use of virtually all her organs but she still fought and fought and fought.”
One of Jade’s only remaining senses was hearing. And on the Friday before her death she asked to listen to her wedding DVD one last time. The following day Kevin Adams played the Aerosmith song I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing, which had been Jade and Jack’s special song.
Jackiey says: “Suddenly she just opened her eyes and started singing.
“Her arms were up in the air and me, Jack, Kevin and the nurses all stood in the room watching her, it was amazing.”
Jack had slept in Jade’s room every
night since the relaxation of his tagging conditions following a jail sentence.
But that last night, as Jade’s breathing took on a rattling tone which the nurses explained meant death was just hours away, he buried himself under cushions on a sofa in the next room.
Jackiey held Jade’s hand and watched her daughter breathing in and out – knowing each breath stole her a little further away from her.
She says: “I must have dozed off after a while because then I felt a nurse tapping my shoulder.
“It had just gone half past two and the nurse simply said ‘Jackiey, she is ready’.
“I ran into the other room to tell Kevin and Jack. Then Jack lifted all the cushions off the sofa and piled them over his head.
“I think he just wanted to be in darkness and to be with Jade. So as she passed, it was like he was passing with her. Kevin and I went and held hands with Jade and slowly said the Lord’s Prayer.
“Then I looked up and saw an envelope saying ‘Mum’. I thought it must be a Mother’s Day card from the boys so I ripped it open as fast as I could.
“I started reading and realised it was from Jade to me. Jack must have held the pen in Jade’s hand and signed her name.
“On the front it said: ‘My mum’s like a teabag – when in hot water she just gets stronger.’ It was choking.
“Kevin was still saying the prayer and as he came to the last few words, ‘Forever and ever, Amen’, Jade passed.
“I stood up and kissed her on the lips – once from myself and once from Jack.
“Her body was still warm but her lips were already cold.”
Tomorrow: "Jade’s incredibly brave boys...and why I slept beside her body"
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