Remembering Jade Goody

I woke up this morning to the headlines reading that Jade Goody has died.

I knew this was coming.  Sort of.  I wanted to believe that the media was hyping it and that truly someone as full of life as Jade could not possibly be dying. 

But I know it's true.

I'm at a loss.  I haven't told Cayman as he is still sleeping. 

Few Americans had heard of Jade until the whole Big Brother debacle recently where she made some racial blunders.  I had just left London it seemed only a short time before she burst on the international scene with that scandal.  Reading what was posted about it and watching effigies of Jade burned in India was horrible.  At the time I shook my head and hoped her career was not going to tank.  I felt as if she would pull herself out of it and she did.

I feel scattered and yet I know that if we do indeed chose our lives, no matter how short, she did come here and do it in a big way.  To think that her short time in the limelight brought attention to matters of cervical cancer in a way no Public Service Announcement ever could.

Jade had a joie de vivre and a lack of shame I hadn't seen before her or since.  Whereas most people feel a sense of embarrassment when they need to ask what a word means, she was brazen and inquisitive.  The first time on the set of Jade's PA when she asked what the word "charisma" meant, I thought it was an act.  I really did.  Then a few moments later when she asked what the word, "construction" was, I knew it was an act.  But as time wore on and production days were in full swing, I realized that she not only didn't know what these words meant, she had never been exposed.

While she had charisma popping out of every pore, her lack of education and exposure to the world outside her neighborhood, was very limited.  People will jump down my throat for saying this when a nation is mourning, but she was treated terribly by those who despised her.  Instead of feeling compassion for a girl who was raised by "wolves" (her parents were not in any run for mom and dad of the year), she was dragged through the mud for her lack of knowledge.  The truth was. Jade was smart as a whip.  She just hadn't been exposed.  She had street smarts in some ways and yet was a total innocent in others.  She trusted those she shouldn't have.

Thank goodness it was only her body that died, as the energy that is Jade is still going strong, just in a different form.  Once you met her, it felt like a tornado that sideswiped a town.  You'd never forget it.