On the Friday before the London Marathon, sitting in Crumlin with her three year old son in intensive care, Cherry Phypers rang the one person she knew would say yes.
That week had already taken everything from her. Kitto had been at crèche on the Monday, had a great day and come home on his scooter. On the Tuesday morning he came downstairs, fell on the floor and had a seizure. By the afternoon he was in ICU. On the Thursday the family were told the tumour had come back and that he was moving to palliative care.
On the Friday the team sat Cherry down and told her not to get on a plane.
"They said, Cherry, we don't think you should fly to London to do this marathon. We don't know what's going to happen."
She had raised a lot of money. She had been training since the previous autumn. She had wanted this.
"I was so devastated, because it had been such an important thing."
So she made a phone call.
"Friday afternoon, I rang the only person in the world that I knew would say yes and could do it. I rang my friend, Emily, and I said, I need you to run the London Marathon for me on Sunday."
"And she didn't even take a breath. She said, of course I fucking will."
"I Sat in Crumlin and Watched My Name Go Around the Marathon"
Emily lives in Oxford. She is, by Cherry's description, a brilliant runner and slightly nuts and fond of a bit of pain, and she was nowhere near marathon ready.
"She'd probably been running 5ks max."
None of that came into it.
"She was like, don't worry. Leave it with me. I'll sort it."
Cherry's brother collected the race pack. Emily stayed at his place on the Saturday night. On Sunday morning she walked onto the start line in Greenwich with Cherry's number on her chest.
"And I sat in Crumlin and watched my name go around the marathon."
Emily came home in just under six hours.
And then there was Kate, who went to university with the pair of them, who lives in Cornwall, and who had no plan to run anything at all.
"She woke up on Sunday morning and knew that Emily was doing this. She said, I don't know what came over me."
"She packed a little bag. She got a yogurt pot."
Kate made a sign that read I didn't intend to run a marathon today, and went out and covered 26 miles on her own around Cornwall, shaking the yogurt pot at everybody she passed.
Cherry sat in the hospital watching the donation alerts come in on her phone and could not work out where any of it was coming from.
"A tenner here, a fiver there. And I was like, what is going on? Where is all this coming from?"
That was Kate, limping her way around Cornwall with a sign.
The Beach Snob From Cornwall
Cherry is a vet in Dundrum, small animals only, having decided fairly early that two in the morning calving calls were not for her.
She is from Cornwall. Her husband AJ is from the Kent and Surrey border. The two of them landed in Dublin in 2019 meaning to stay a short while and never left.
"It was only going to be for a short time, but we've ended up in the lifestyle, in the city. So we've no reason to leave."
She will tell you straight out that she is a beach snob, and that there are very few beaches outside Cornwall she will accept.
"Except Ireland. I found Ireland has got really good ones. Maybe that's why I like it here. It reminds me a bit of Cornwall."
They have three children. Roo is the eldest, Daisy is nearly two, and in the middle was Kitto.
The Kitman
Everybody called him the Kitman. He called himself the Kitman.
"He was very cute. He was very small. He had the longest eyelashes, and he could make you do anything. He was such a charmer, and people just fell in love with him."
"But he was so tough. And he was so competitive. He was the sort of cheery chap of the family for sure. He was a practical joker. We say he's the most Irish in our family, he had that Irish charm and chats. A gas man.”
"He had everybody wrapped around his little finger, in a good way."
He and his big brother worked as a pair, and he gave Roo a lot of confidence.
Roo is sociable, but in a brand new situation he hangs back a bit and takes his time until he has met everybody. Kitto just bowled in.
So Kitto would go first and do the chatting, and Roo would come in behind him once the ground had been broken.
"They were a little duo."
He was also, annoyingly, good at everything.
"He was a natural sportsman. He was an incredible little sports guy. He was very talented. He could just do everything. He was one of those."
Cherry reckons the reason is simple enough. He spent his whole short life trying to keep up with his brother.
May
The signs were almost nothing.
"He had been on and off not very well. A bit of vomiting, really subtle. We'd been to the doctor. They thought it was a bug. Back and forward. He had a trip to A&E. Nothing really."
He had been referred to a paediatric specialist because his growth had dipped off the chart, and that was the only thing anybody was actively looking at.
"No one was really, you know, they were like, he's great. He's scooting. He's cycling. He was playing tennis."
Then in May last year he had two bad weeks and Cherry stopped believing the bug theory.
"I was like, I don't know if this is a bug. This is weird."
AJ took him back into Crumlin. They did a CT. They found a brain tumour.
"I still sometimes don't believe it now. I'm like, I just don't believe it."
"Everything just felt like the world was snowballing, completely out of control. And you're like, not Kitto. This cannot happen to Kitto."
He had surgery that night and they removed the tumour.
Arguing With the Nurse
They kept him under the following day because they wanted to do a scan, and when the time came to wake him they warned AJ it could take a long while.
AJ went to make a cup of tea.
"They said, you need to come. He's awake."
"And he'd woken up, and he was arguing with the nurse that he could open these cars by himself and he didn't need help."
"That's him. That was just him."
They had warned the family about what might be gone. The tumour sat close to the centres for the eye and the ear. He might not walk. He might not talk. His balance might never come back.
"He was 100% from waking up. He was back on his scooter within a week, and he was hitting tennis balls in the garden when he got home."
"And you were like, are you sure this has happened? Because he looks great."
His eye was swollen shut, so he was hitting them with one eye.
"He could still connect. That was just him. Just bounced back, carried on. No worries. Happy out. No complaining. He just got on with it. He was amazing."
Germany
A couple of weeks later came the news that the tumour was malignant, and that chemotherapy was starting.
"That was another big hit. Like a massive rock has just hit you."
And then they mentioned Germany. Six weeks of proton radiotherapy, not optional, in a city the family did not know.
"You just can't process any of that. You're just like, how. I don't understand how this is all going to work."
"Where do we stay? Who comes? Do we all go? When?"
That is where the Gavin Glynn Foundation came in. Crumlin emailed them. The family's clinical nurse specialist told them not to worry about it, that the Gavin Glynn would sort them out.
Then John from the foundation emailed, and asked one question.
"It's literally just, what are your dates?"
They had to go out first for a short planning trip to meet the hospital.
"Within a day, he comes back with our flights, with our transfers, with our hotel. And you're just like, I can't describe how amazing that is when you're in that situation, to have that completely removed from anything you have to think about."
When the full six weeks were confirmed, the family decided all five of them would go. Cherry sent the dates again.
"He comes back with an apartment, with flights, with expenses, with transfers. Everything is completely sorted. You even get met at the airport by somebody from Aer Lingus, and they fast track you through."
"They just said, send your passport details, and they book it. And that's that."
"And they don't ask for anything in return, and it's incredible."
She puts the alternative plainly, and anybody who has ever tried to book a family holiday will feel it.
"How would you even think about trying to book an apartment in Germany, in a city that you don't know, for six weeks, for your whole family?"
The Best Six Weeks of the Year
Here is the part that stops people.
"Weirdly, those six weeks in Germany is probably some of my favourite time over last year."
Chemotherapy weeks are brutal, with the sickness and the infection risk and the in and out of hospital. Radiotherapy was a different thing entirely.
"He was really well. We would go to the centre in Germany, and it was like a day centre. Really modern, really open, really fresh looking. He would have a sedation, they would do the radiotherapy, and then you would wait for him to wake up and get on with your day."
"Two to three hours in the day. But he tolerated it amazingly. His energy was good. He didn't feel sick. He was eating."
Kitto cycled to the hospital on his balance bike. He had his treatment. Then he got back on the bike.
"He'd say Bis morgen to the nurses. He would say danke as he left, got a sweet, and he was happy out. And then he would just carry on with his day and crack on. You wouldn't have known."
They went to Legoland. They went to the parks and the playgrounds. And they developed a serious crazy golf habit.
"There's lots of crazy golf courses everywhere, and he became quite obsessed. We nearly went once a week. And he always got a hole in one at some level, when you're like, but you're three."
"It was all about being on a slightly odd extended holiday, and the weather was good. I always think back quite fondly on that."
"They will always be a very special charity, I think, following that."
He finished treatment in February and went back to being himself.
Then came April.
Two Months
Kitto woke up from ICU, which they had been told probably would not happen.
"He woke up from ICU, which was great. They said he probably wouldn't, but he did. Of course he did."
"He didn't really talk again, which is really sad. But he could smile. He could communicate. He could say yes, and you knew what he meant, and you knew when he meant no. He could play."
He was in hospital from April until June.
"Over the next two months, it slowly was a deterioration, which was the worst."
He was awake less. He slept more.
He died on 10 June. Our worlds fell apart. Again. He had had his birthday the December before. He would be four and a half now.
"Dublin Is Kitto's Marathon"
Somewhere in those weeks in the hospital, Cherry worked out that she had been aiming at the wrong race.
"I knew Dublin was in October, and I was like, the London Marathon is not Kitto's Marathon. Dublin Marathon is Kitto's Marathon."
"This is where he lived. This is where he was born. It runs past the hospital. It runs past the end of our road. And I can run for the charities that I really want to run for. The ones that I've had personal connections with."
"Why am I waiting for London? Just because it's big and it's flashy. Fine. No. Dublin is what I need to do."
"Over this time I was like, the marathon is my project, and this is what we're going to do."
Eight
It started with two places from Aoibheann's Pink Tie, for Cherry and for runner Emily, who had made her promise after London that they would do one together properly.
Then a place came through from the Gavin Glynn Foundation that Cherry had not accounted for, so she mentioned it to her other friend, also called Emily, who is emphatically not a runner and will tell you so herself.
"She said, if not now, then when? And there'd be no one. I never ever ever want to run a marathon, but I will for Kitto."
Then Cherry gives the line that explains the whole team.
"And this is what he did to people. He made you do things."
That made three.
Then Marie, the mother of Kitto's best friend Tom.
"I said, do you fancy it? And she was like, yeah. For Kitto, I'll do it."
Four.
At Kitto's funeral, a friend overheard Cherry talking about the marathon and came over and asked to be included. Five.
A friend's husband, six foot and a rugby player, announced that it was a terrible idea for him and signed up anyway. Six.
Cherry's sister in law would have run it but for a bad knee, so her son Max, who is 18, took the place instead. Seven.
Emily's brother came in. Then Oscar's Kids rang with a place of their own, and Cherry took it on the spot.
"Before I knew it, I had a team of eight people all running for Kitto. And it's just so amazing. They all want to do it, and that's really special."
Max, incidentally, will be the quickest of the lot.
"He's going to bring our time down big time."
Five Charities, and What Each One Did
Between the eight of them they are running for five charities, and Cherry can tell you exactly what each one did for her family.
The Gavin Glynn Foundation got them to Germany and back.
Jack and Jill, who Max is running for, sent nurses into the house so that Kitto could come home between April and June.
"At that point he was on quite a lot of medication. He was having seizures from time to time, which were really horrible. So it was really worrying bringing him home. But Jack and Jill provide nurses that come into your house. They would be here in the day, they'd give him all his medications, they'd talk to the hospital."
"You couldn't function without them."
Marie is running for Childhood Cancer Ireland, who are constantly working in the hospital, and who run a lodge for families that the family were booked into and never got to use because Kitto became ill around the time they were due to go.
Rosie is running for a foundation that helps families with the financial side of all this.
And then there is Oscar's Kids.
"Oscar's Kids are one of the best. They covered all of Kitto's funeral. They pay for ice cream vans to turn up outside our house when Kitto came home at the weekend, for the kids on the green. They're just an amazing family that are always there."
And there are the ones that eight people simply cannot stretch to cover.
There is also the Keeley D Foundation, who have been hugely supportive, and whose founder still checks in on Cherry.
"We also have LauraLynn. We haven't got anybody running for LauraLynn. It's impossible to run across all these charities."
"There's just loads of them. There's just so many."
"I've Got My Fast Shoes On"
There is a WhatsApp group, and it has carried her.
"Through the whole training, they send me photos. Sunday long runs. Kitto long runs. Thinking of the Kitman."
Kitto used to announce that he had his fast shoes on. So now they text her.
"They'll text me saying, I've got my fast shoes on today."
Mike, one of the eight, has a chiropractic clinic and sponsored the team kit, so there are training jumpers and race day T-shirts and the whole thing looks like a team because it is one.
"It sounds quite dramatic, but I'd say it's a complete lifesaver. To get up, to get you out, to go running, and to have this group of people that you know are doing it with you for the same reason. Because they all care, and they all miss him as well."
And underneath it is the thing she is most honest about in the entire conversation.
"It's a way of talking about him, knowing people are thinking about him. Because sometimes the world keeps going, and you're worried that people are just moving on, and they sort of forget. That's your big worry, that people just forget."
"They can wake up the next day, and it's not directly happened to them, so they can easily get on with their day. But we wake up every day, and that's it. That's reality every day. You carry the sadness every single day"
"But I know that when they go running, they're thinking of Kitto. And it's so great."
What Would Kitman Do
Cherry has a question she asks herself, and the family ask it too.
"We would always say, what would Kitman do now?"
"Even through treatment, he would never. He would just get on with it. He just got on with things, and he was always quite cheery. He was the cheeriest among us, for sure."
Which is also, as it happens, her race plan.
"I keep thinking, if kids can go through nine, ten months of chemotherapy and stuff that kids of three shouldn't go through, I can get through a four hour, five hour run."
"There's just no comparison."
Three Runs a Week, in Whatever Windows There Are
This is not Cherry's first marathon. She ran London in 2012 off a printed training plan with no running watch, and has never gone near those times since. Brighton followed around 2018, with a scattering of triathlons in between, most of them with runner Emily. Before all that it was netball, hockey, and rowing a Cornish gig at home.
These days the training goes into whatever gaps the week leaves, with AJ making sure she gets out.
"He really knows that this is something that I need to make time for. He's brilliant at making sure that I have time to go running."
She does about three runs a week. Tuesdays are her day off work so the long run goes there when it can. Otherwise it is out the door at eight or nine in the evening.
"Those are hard. But when you're out, they're fine, and you might catch a really nice evening, which is always good, like over at the beach."
During the hospital stretch she started running to and from Crumlin and showering in Kitto's room, because the rooms there have their own bathrooms.
She is strict about getting them done, and not really for the training.
"Just to keep you sane."
Fuelling is less settled. She likes a mix of gels and chews, because by two or three hours in, the stickiness and the sweetness of gels alone defeats her. She bought a fresh pack recently, took one, and could not stomach the taste. She will not wear a vest, only a belt, so there is a hard limit on what she can carry.
She has no fundraising target, which is deliberate.
"I really wanted to pay back, in my head, essentially how much they spent on us. And I don't really know how much that is. So I just want to raise as much money as I can."
When she first emailed the Gavin Glynn Foundation promising to fundraise, they told her it was not a priority and not to think about it.
"And I was just like, no. We will."
Race Day
There will be a crowd. A substantial number are flying in from the UK to run or just to stand on the route, her Dublin friends will be out, and the staff from Kitto's crèche have asked where she expects to be and when.
"I'm hoping that I see as many people as possible on the way around. It's going to be an unbelievable day, and it's going to be like a big Kitto celebration."
She wants to run well, and wants a good time for herself. But the finish she is most looking forward to is not her own.
"Emily, the non runner, sometimes sends me a video of when she's out running. She's just like, I cannot believe he's making me do this."
"I'm almost more excited for her to finish it. For some people a marathon's easier, and for some people it's a massive challenge."
The Monday
What Cherry is nervous about is not the distance.
"I'm slightly worried about when it's over. I kind of want to do it, but I kind of don't want it to be finished."
"I'm really excited for the day. I'm really excited to run. But I'm worried when it's finished, to be honest."
Which is the thing worth saying plainly, so she hears it from somewhere other than herself. The marathon on the last Sunday in October is not the end of anything.
Eight people learned to run this year because a three year old boy made them do things. There is a WhatsApp group full of people texting each other about their fast shoes. There are five charities who will be better off because of a family in Dublin who decided to pay back what they were given. None of that stops at a finish line on Merrion Square, unless everybody involved decides to let it.
A year ago, Cherry would not have done this interview at all.
"Last year I never really wanted to speak about Kitto's illness, because he was here, and I didn't want that to become him."
"But now I think it's really important to talk about him."
She was worried about doing it, and then found she was glad she had.
"It's nice to tell his story, and our crazy marathon journey. From Emily running London to eight of us doing Dublin. It's just pretty fun."
And then the reason for all of it, in one sentence.
"I just want the world to know that he was here, and he was amazing."
He was. And on the last Sunday in October, a good few thousand people in Dublin are going to find that out.
You can support Cherry and the team's fundraising for the Gavin Glynn Foundationhere.
