UNTIL now, Jade Goody never believed she’d have to look death in the face.
She believed that if you really want to live, if you pray hard enough for it, if you throw every fibre of your being into making it happen— then you will.
But that would be in a world where everything was right and fair and where miracles really DO happen.
Jade prayed long and hard for her miracle—but it never came. The cancer she has fought so valiantly has finally beaten her.
It took just a moment for doctors to snuff out the only glimmer of hope that had been lighting up the long dark days since her operation last week.
On Friday afternoon they gathered around her bed and told her there was nothing more they could do. The battle was over and they were sending her home to die.
“I couldn’t breathe when they told me,” says Jade. “I just screamed and cried and said, ‘Can’t anyone do anything to help me!’ Because a few weeks ago when they first told me the chemo hadn’t worked they said it didn’t have to be the end.
“They said there were lots of other medicines out there and there were other things they could do.
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/img/...quote_open.gifI know they’ve done everything they can to help me and I’m grateful. But I really thought I might be OKhttp://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/img/...uote_close.gif
“And I believed them. And there they were telling me it was the end. I didn’t want to believe it. I’m not blaming them. I know they’ve done everything they can to help me and I’m grateful. But I really thought I might be OK.
“But,” she says quietly, “I suppose there was this little part of me that didn’t. Since my bowel operation last week the pain has been getting worse and worse and I still haven’t been to the loo and I knew that was a bad sign. But I was still praying for a miracle.”
Jade says she was by herself when doctors delivered the news that brought her world crashing down around her:
“I rang Jack immediately and he came running in. He was crying and so very upset. He just kept saying, ‘All that chemo, all that pain and it was all for nothing’. He refused to accept it at first and he and the rest of the family started talking about getting me on a plane to America.
“They kept telling me they can do amazing things over there and that maybe there is some miracle cure that we don’t know about.
“But as I listened to them I just kept thinking, ‘It’s too late for me. My time has run out.’ All I want to do now is spend whatever time I have left with Jack and the kids.
“You know, when Jack came out of prison he had no idea how sick I was. And I know this is hard for him because he expected to get me back. He expected the chemo to work and that we’d have a life together as a family.
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/img/...quote_open.gifBut I swear we WILL be a family before I die—just not for as long as I’d have hopedhttp://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/img/...uote_close.gif
“But I swear we WILL be a family before I die—just not for as long as I’d have hoped.
“I love Jack with all my heart and I want to be his wife more than anything in the world. And I will be.
“He’s devastated but he’s really trying to hold it together for me. But as soon as he found out I was going to die he just said, ‘Right then we’re getting married. You’re a special woman, I love you and I would be honoured to call you my wife. And I don’t care if it’s just for a few weeks’.” Jade knows that at 27 she’s too young to die. And, yes, she wants to rant and rail and scream: “I want to ask God why he couldn’t have given me more time with my boys.
“Just a bit—just enough to hear them laugh a few more times, to see that they’re happy, to write them long letters so I can tell them who I was and how much I loved them and remind them about all the things we did together.
“Because they might forget me. And I can’t bear the thought of that.
“I’ve decided I’m going to make them a Memory Box and put in lots of things that will remind them of me and what we did together. And maybe when they’re older it will help them remember.”
A few weeks ago Jade said something that I can’t get out of my head. She said: “I keep asking myself what I did that was so bad that it had to end like this.”
And as I listened to her I realised that’s how she must see this. A deprived childhood with parents too stupid, too selfish and too drug- addicted to make a decent life for their little girl. So, the first chance she got she made one for herself. It’s not the one every parent would have wanted for their daughter.
But for Jade fame and money helped her escape shackles of a miserable childhood, a childhood where she looked after everyone but no-one looked after her.
But the biggest prize in her glitzy new life wasn’t the fame or the money—it was her beloved boys, Freddie, four, and Bobby, five. Jade once told me she believed she’d been given the chance to make good what had happened in HER childhood through her boys.
She was determined that they would have a totally different life to the one she’d had.
They would have a beautiful home, they would have money—but best of all they would have an education, something the street-savvy Jade had always wanted for herself. And the boys truly are a credit to her. They’re sweet, well adjusted, well behaved children and Jade’s biggest joy is that she’s able to pay for them to go to a private school
“When I first knew I had cancer I worked out a strategy,” she said. “I thought if I earn enough money while I’m sick there will be enough for them to go to private school until they are 18.
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/img/...quote_open.gifI want my boys to have the very best chance in life they can havehttp://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/img/...uote_close.gif
“I know people think I’m betraying my roots by sending them to a private school but I want them to have the very best chance in life they can have. And that’s what my money is for. What’s the point of everything I have if I can’t do that for them?”
Jade Goody is an enigma. Even now, when she knows she has less than eight weeks to live, there is resoluteness about her, a strength that is hard to fathom.
When she was first diagnosed and we talked I kept thinking she didn’t really understand what was happening to her. I thought she didn’t understand that she might die.
And, God forgive me, I put it down to the fact she might not be very bright and that she hadn’t fully grasped the seriousness of her condition.
But now I see she always understood. She always knew.
She just put the cancer-stricken Jade away in a box, the one she thought might die, and she kept bringing out the Bright, Bubbly, Indefatigable Jade, the one people expected to see—the one no-one believed for a second would die. And no-one really did. Until now . . .
But now I see it helped her cope. It’s still helping her cope as she prepares for the big white wedding she always dreamed of.
She won’t talk about funeral arrangements. Instead she wants to talk about wedding planners, make-up artists, dresses and wedding cakes.
And just hours after she’d been told she was going to die a friend overheard her and Jack laughing uproariously in her room.
When he asked what was going on Jade was shouting: “Don’t tell him, don’t tell him!”
What had happened was that Jack was trying to show Jade how to break wind so that her swollen stomach might feel just a little more comfortable.
And last night—just a day after her terrible news—Jade was busily getting ready for a Valentine’s Day party with her friends.
It was being held in a little ante- room next to her bedroom and even though Jack can’t stay with her on what will be her last ever Valentine’s Day—because of the conditions of his prison electronic-tag curfew—she was determined to make the best of it and have a party.
All her friends and their partners readily agreed to give up their own Valentine’s Day celebrations to drink champagne with Jade.
“As Jack’s not here my best friend Jen is going to be my date,” says Jade. “But that’s OK. I’ll have my day with Jack and it WILL be the best day of my life.”
WEDDING DAY SHE LONGS FOR
JUST hours after being told she was going to die, Jade Goody’s drug-fuddled mind shuddered into sharp focus.
The fatigue and the grim news that her life now had a time limit were dispensed with. I’d talked to her earlier in the day and she could barely stay awake. But now her survival instincts had kicked in. There was no time to sleep. She had a wedding to plan and very little time to do it.
So at 11pm on Friday she started ringing friends and family—bombarding them with demands and giving them very precise lists of what she wants them to do.
She wanted names of good make-up artists and she wanted to know about wedding cakes. What vicar could marry her in such a short time? And was there a caterer who could pull a wedding like this together in a week? Because Jade knows that’s all the time she has to plan what will be one of the happiest—and probably one of the saddest—days of her life. And instead of wasting time on how she is going to die, this incredible woman decided instead to throw every last ounce of her energy into how she was going to live.
The wedding will be in the next week —even though she hasn’t yet picked a church or a vicar. And she’s determined it will be wonderful.
“For a few hours she was like a whirling dervish,” a friend said last night. “She paid a heavy price for it the next day because she was in excruciating pain. But for the few hours she was able to function she went at those wedding arrangements like a woman possessed.
“It was hard to believe she’d just been told she was going to die. I don’t know where that energy came from but I guess it’s because she knows time is now short and God bless her, she’s making the most of every minute. She decided if she didn’t have time to sleep then the rest of us weren’t going to either. And that’s absolutely fine. Everyone who loves her knows how important this day will be to her.”
Jade has decided she wants a Bentley to drive her to the church and a helicopter to take her to the reception. “It’s something she’s always wanted,” says her friend. “And at this moment what Jade wants, Jade is going to get.”
And it isn’t just a wedding Jade has to plan. Lawyers will be arriving at her home in Essex next week to put the finishing touches to her will which is expected to say that all Jade’s money and her three properties will go to her kids.
“She wants the boys’ education sorted out,” said the friend. She wants where they’re going to live sorted out and she wants to make sure there’s enough money so they will always be secure.
“It’s heartbreaking but it has to be done. And Jade knows it.”
