She’s Running the Mini Marathon to Honour Her Niece Ava
There are some people who leave such a mark on the world that those who loved them spend a lifetime finding ways to carry them forward. For Emma O’Brien, lacing up her runners this weekend for the VHI Women’s Mini Marathon is exactly that kind of gesture. She’ll be running in memory of her niece Ava, who died aged 14 after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and she’ll be doing it to mark what would have been Ava’s 18th birthday.
“I’ll definitely just think of Ava 100%,” Emma says. “I kind of take her with me everywhere I go now.”
Ava became ill less than a year before she died and was cared for at CHI Crumlin, on St John’s Ward. For Emma and her family, the level of care they witnessed there made the decision about which charity to support an easy one. “She had amazing care there,” Emma says. “The nurses, the doctors, oncologists, everybody — our whole team were really phenomenal. When I decided to do this, I was saying to myself, who else would I go for? CHF would have been the number one on my list, just for the level of care and how warm everyone was, how welcome they made everybody feel, and how well they looked after her.”
A champion in every sense
Ask Emma to describe Ava and you get a picture of someone who was, in every way, extraordinary. A gifted artist who loved sketching and painting. An Irish dancer. A child who had spent part of her childhood living in Australia. Somebody with a gorgeous smile and a relentless, infectious positivity that didn’t dim even through the hardest days of her illness.
“She was always worried about everybody else,” Emma says. “She was worried about her little brother James and worried about her mum and dad.” Even in the ambulance, even when she was seriously unwell, Ava would still find the smile. “She’d always have the biggest smile on her face,” Emma remembers. “When she was so ill, she was still so positive.”
Ava loved the sea, meditation and being outdoors. She had hoped to get back swimming towards the end. “She really wanted to go for a swim,” Emma says quietly. “That didn’t happen in the end.”
“She was a champion,” Emma says. “She was just everything you could ever imagine.”
A snowball of support
This will be Emma’s first organised race, though she’s no stranger to running and the gym. She’d always kept things manageable — the 3k or 5k distances that are, as she puts it, “nice and quick” — so signing up for the Mini Marathon meant upping things a bit. She’s approaching the day with calm pragmatism. “I’ve never done anything before, so I’m not sure what it’ll be like with the crowds and stuff, but I’m just going to take it as it comes and take in the atmosphere.”
The fundraising response caught her off guard entirely. She’d expected support mostly from family, given that the whole thing was tied to Ava’s birthday. Instead it spread far and wide, far faster than she’d imagined. “It kind of snowballed,” she says. “Before I knew it, I was over my goal really quickly.”
She hopes every euro raised will make some small difference for families going through the unimaginable. “If it can help with equipment or helping children in need or making things a little bit easier for parents, anything at all really, I’d be really happy.”
Carrying Ava on the day
Emma plans to have a photograph of Ava on her t-shirt when she runs. It’s a small thing, and also everything. “She’ll be in the forefront of my mind as I’m taking off,” she says. And she won’t just be thinking of Ava. “Everybody will get a thought as I’m taking off.”
This weekend Emma will be joined by over 170 women running as part of Team Children’s Health Foundation in the VHI Women’s Mini Marathon, all raising funds to support sick children and their families through lifesaving research, holistic therapies and family supports.
If Emma’s story has moved you, you can support her run in memory of Ava at her iDonate fundraising page. Every little bit counts.
