If there is one person whose shoes I would not like to be in tonight they are those of Jade Goody’s mother, Jackiey Budden. Obviously being in Jade’s shoes right now is not an option as she is said to be just hours from losing her battle with cancer – but I am thinking especially about Jackiey Budden at the moment.

Jackiey and Jade are not only mother and daughter they are also both mothers experiencing the most atrocious agony and I am not talking about any cancer related agony.

I am referring to the agony of a mother losing a child and a mother losing her time with her children. Jackiey is losing her daughter, Jade is leaving behind her two little boys and for each of them it would be indescribably painful.

Jade has often spoken of her terrible childhood as the child of a drug addicted mother; a neglectful mother who often required much mothering herself with a very young Jade stepping into the shoes of the carer rather the cared-for. Jade was beaten as a child, abused and at one time placed into foster care – the path she trod to the phenomenal success she later found as a Big Brother contestant was rocky to say the least, pitted with all the difficulties that the children of drug addicted parents suffer.

But she dragged herself up and made a life for herself, and eventually for her two children, which is amazing as most people with such abusive and neglected childhoods rarely go on to be ideal parents themselves. But Jade had been a ‘parent’ to her own mother since she was five years old – which leaves me wondering about what must Jackiey, her mother, be feeling right now…beyond the typical grief of a mother losing a child.

Jackiey must be harbouring the most deeply felt feelings of regret; at not having been the mother she should have been when Jade was young - at many, many times when she and Jade experienced the worst of times together. Surely as a parent the one thing you never want to regret is having failed your child at some time in their life, particularly at a time when that child has done more for you than you even did for them.

Jackiey joined the rollercoaster ride of Jade’s fame and fortune and she has obviously enjoyed it – living in a home she was never able to give her own daughter; holidays to exotic locations; shopping at Harrods; appearing on television shows - the personal fame she enjoyed at being the mother of a celebrity. Even into her adulthood Jade was still looking after Jackiey.

Since Jade’s cancer diagnosis Jackiey has learned to become a mother, a real mother – the type of mother Jade needed when she was a little girl. It has been an amazing thing to see. And just when Jackiey was getting the grasp of not just motherhood, but grandmotherhood as well, she is about to lose the one person who she really owes everything in her life to…her daughter.

Jade made sure she never had those regrets as a mother herself – she is leaving behind two little boys at a time when they need a Mummy the most and that alone would be the most unbearable pain of all.

Jackiey will probably be filled with regret over the way she let her daughter down all those years ago but if there is one thing she can do to continue the redemption she experienced as Jade Goodys Mother – and that is to never, ever let those two little boys down in the same way.

A mother’s shoes are impossible to fill – just maybe, as a grandmother, Jackiey will come close enough to filling her daughter’s. Jade and Jackiey – two mothers losing their children…it’s probably the first real bond they have ever shared.

Related Link: Andrew Goody dies from drug overdose