Today, this golden-hued cup is like treasure for Violet. Less than three months after she hand painted it, Ellen collapsed at the Cork City Marathon, tragically passing away.

Violet drinks from it every day, and as she finishes her tea each time, she sees Ellen’s words.

“When we went to Dublin,” Violet explains, “and took her stuff out of her flat, the girls said ‘we have something special for you’. And they came out with this... It is so precious.”

We meet in Violet and Tom’s home in north Cork. Ellen’s sister Mary is at school, and Charlie is sitting a college exam, but their faces beam down from the breadth of family photos that adorn the open plan kitchen and living room. In each picture, Ellen is with them, the eldest in a school photo of the three siblings; smiling radiantly from a swimming pool in Portugal.

The water, Violet and Tom agree, was her happy place. They recall holidays with her as a toddler where they all would emerge from the pool with wrinkled fingers. “She would never want to leave,” Tom laughs.

They sourced lessons for her on their return and at aged just six she joined Dolphin Swimming Club. Her raw talent and hard determination would take her far. From the age of 11, right up to Leaving Cert, six days a week there was a 4.45am alarm call for early morning practice. 

She was on deck midweek for training at 5.20am in Mayfield, and there were evening gym sessions too, twice a week. “The natural ability was there,” says Tom, a business consultant. “She went up all the various levels, from Learn to Swim to lanes to then competitive squads.” There was no pressure from her parents — Ellen was self motivated.

“There were mornings,” Violet says smiling, “where I’d call her at the top of the stairs. ‘Ellen, are you going?’ And I’d be praying that she would say no so I could go back into bed. And she’d say, ‘yeah. I’m coming’. I’d say, in the nine or 10 years of doing early mornings, she must have missed only five sessions. She would say, look, the coaches turn up. I have to go. And she forged strong, amazing friendships.”

Today her swimming achievements are showcased in a tribute on the Dolphin Swimming Club website.

“It became clear quite quickly that Ellen was a talented swimmer... Combining this with a fierce appetite for training and a fearless approach to racing, she went from strength to strength,” they write. 

“By the age of 11, she was training with the senior squad at the club and was attracting attention both on the Munster and national scene.  At the age of 13, Ellen began to achieve times that qualified her for Ireland development squads and she progressed through the ranks in the national team to swim at numerous international events.” 

Her career highlights are listed, from European Junior Championships in Helsinki to representing Ireland internationally in Scotland, England, Slovenia, Portugal, Finland and Luxembourg.

She went to school in St Angela’s, her parents agreeing to her request to move to Bruce College for her Leaving Cert. Everywhere she went, her parents recall, she established firm friendships. And then, awarded a prestigious Ad Astra scholarship at UCD, she moved to Dublin. She returned in 2020 as covid brought rolling lockdowns.

Violet recalls the evening Ellen sat in the front room with a friend, deciding whether she would return to Dublin, or move to UCC, to be closer to home.

“You’re hoping she’d stay,” says Violet, “but really, you want what’s best for her. And how lucky were we, because we got four more years with her. If she had been in Dublin, we’d have been thrilled for her — look, you want your child to follow their dreams, absolutely. But her decision meant that we had her, at home.” 

While she studied, Ellen found part time work at CUMH, where Violet works in administration. She helped with covid vaccinations, assisted on Saturdays throughout the cyberattack, worked the wards. All the while, she continued her BIS degree in UCC. 

“We had all that wonderful time together. She’d roll out of bed, she’d have her porridge and her frozen berries ready and we’d leave here in the mornings together,” recalls Violet. 

“I mightn’t see her during the day, I might meet her along the wards or something, but I’d come home again with her in the evenings.” Because she had returned to first year, Ellen was a little older than all the girls in her year. Her friends looked to her for guidance.

They told us when Ellen passed that week, they used to refer to Ellen as WWECD — ’What would Ellen Cassidy do?’ The college gang, there’s around 10 of them that all hang around, one is more beautiful than the next. She never told us that — when they were trying to make a decision as a group, if Ellen wasn’t there, they would say, ‘What would Ellen Cassidy do?’”

In the 11 months since her sudden passing, Tom and Violet have adopted the same mantra. 

It is the cornerstone of the Ellen Cassidy Foundation, created in her memory to raise funds for charities important to Ellen and her family. The fundraising happened organically. 

Close friends wanted to honour Ellen. A friend ran the Dublin City Marathan, there was a family Christmas swim, a gala organised by Dolphin Swimming Club, and a Hyrox event. And so, the foundation was born.

“Myself and Vi and the family, we’d say, well, where do we want to put that money? What would Ellen like us to do,” says Tom. 

Seven weeks before she passed away, Ellen had run the marathon in Milan. Her parents often thought about how traumatic it would have been if she had collapsed at that race. So one donation has been assigned to the Kevin Bell Repatriation Fund. Another has been earmarked for the first responders who were immediately on the scene when Ellen collapsed at the finish line. 

And then there is CRY, the charity that, Tom says, does “tremendous work” in a situation of Sudden Cardiac Death. 

Elizabeth Whitmore from the Family Heart Screening Clinic at Heart House at the Mater Hospital in Dublin was, he adds, a huge support to the family.

"She has been there for us since Ellen passed from SADS: heart screenings for us all, genetic testing support — so empathetic."

Ellen was living in Dublin in the months before the marathon — her first class honours degree secured her a position in PwC. She was in Cork, however, in the days leading up to her death. Violet will be forever grateful for this.

“Ellen rang to say she was coming to Cork with the team to meet a client on the Tuesday,” says Violet. “And I said to her will you ever ask them can you stay and work in the Cork office for a few days. What was the point in going back to Dublin when she was coming down again for the bank holiday. She rang the next day and she said her boss said yes, and I said ‘Oh thank him’.

“And I did thank him 10 times afterwards myself, when I met him at the funeral.”

There were poignant moments with members of the family and close friends those days in Cork, Violet and Tom say it was almost as though she was saying goodbye. There was an unexpected afternoon with her aunt, Jenny, who stepped in to collect Ellen when Violet was working. 

She visited her grandmother one evening and did her hair. She spent a whole night cuddled up on the couch with her sister Mary – Violet captured the moment with a photo, now framed in the living room.

There was a family dinner, where they celebrated an award from PwC — Ellen was named ‘Most Valued Player’ for the month of May. Her boyfriend Rob, who she met on her J1 in Newport the previous summer (her holiday “of a lifetime”), was at her side. 

They were, Violet and Tom say, deeply in love. And they would tell each other so at the start of the marathon just days later.

On the Friday, Violet, Tom and Mary travelled to visit family in Kerry – it was Tom’s mother’s anniversary on the day of the marathon.

The day before she passed away, Ellen sent her mum a text — she would choose her to be her mum in every lifetime, again and again and again.

“That’s just every mum’s dream to receive a message like this,” she says, turning her screen to share the precious words.

All weekend long Ellen had been in two minds about running the half marathon. She asked everyone’s advice, even ChatGPT. 

In the end, she decided to join her friends, and collected a ticket number that Saturday. The morning of the marathon Violet and Tom FaceTimed Ellen. 

“We said, ‘We better give her a buzz to make sure she’s out of the bed’,” says Violet. “She was up and excited, and she said, Mum, I’m worried about my ankle — she had a bit of an injury. I said, maybe take a Nurofen, but take it easy. I asked her what she was wearing and she said, ‘Oh, the same running gear as I wore to the Milan marathon, the black T shirt, pale blue shorts.’... She asked if she could have prinks in the house after, I said of course, and I revoluted her money for a taxi to the race.”

Violet looks to Tom. He had, she says, a strange feeling that morning on the call. 

“I’ve never seen her looking so beautiful,” he says. “And it actually came into my head — she looked like an angel.” 

They had a walk by the sea, went to mass for the anniversary. “Because she was going to Dublin the following day, she loved this particular beautiful brown bread. It has walnuts in it. So I said, I have to go and get the bread for Ellen. It was about half 12 at this stage, and Tom said to me, we’ll ring her, and I said, No, no, let her alone. She’d only be just coming in. Give her a chance to land. And the commotion of finishing the marathon...

“We were in the car, and it was 10 past one when my phone rang with a number I didn’t recognise. And I thought, oh her phone is dead. The battery must be gone. It was Rob’s mother. 

She said, ‘something’s happened to Ellen’. And I went, ‘oh my god, it’s her ankle’. And she said ‘No, it’s more serious than that. Where are you? You need to come straight away.’ Panic sets in.”

Violet’s sister Jenny took Mary and told them to drive to Cork. The phone rang again. The hospital liaison officer said a garda escort would be waiting to take them to CUH. 

And Violet said then she knew Ellen was gone. 

They knew every effort had been made; doctors told them later that nothing could have been done to save her.

Her sister Mary followed them to the hospital; her brother Charlie was flown back that night from a swimming competition in Italy. And then family, friends and the local community came out in force. 

There was a nine hour wake — thousands queued for hours at the family home to pay tribute to Ellen. The couple are still blown away by what people did for them. 

One friend of Ellen’s had flown back to Canada the day before. When she heard what happened she stayed at the airport and booked an immediate plane back to Cork. Another had the foresight to suggest taking a copy of Ellen’s fingerprint. 

Today, embossed in silver, family and close friends wear it as a necklace around their necks. Another gave them an Aura picture frame — friends and family upload digital photos in a slow trickle, so the Cassidys can continue to discover new photos of Ellen. When Tom sat down to write Ellen’s eulogy, there was another little miracle.

“We came back here to the house, and high up over that press there,” Tom signals to the kitchen cupboard, “there were four books just hanging out over just over the edge of it. It caught my eye: there was nothing up there, it was almost waiting to be found. I jumped up on top of the stool, pulled them down and just stared.”

“I didn’t even knew she wrote a diary,” says Violet. “I’m her mother, and I never knew. If they hadn’t been over the lip, when would I have found them? Tom was trying to write the eulogy, we were thinking what do we say. And then we’re looking through some of the diaries, and we said, Oh, my God, that’s it.”

“It was actually easy for me to write the front and the back, and the main bit then was Ellen’s diary,” says Tom. He read her words from the altar:

“Ellen it’s all you, step up, be brave. If you fail, you fail. But step out of your comfort zone. Don’t follow the crowd. I know it’s easier said than done, but you will never know the person you could be if you don’t try and step up.

“In the next 10 years, you’ll be finished college. Working, maybe. In a relationship? Travelling? Swimming? Buying a house? Driving a car? You will never know what life will throw at you but you must embrace it. Make choices, make decisions, and don’t look back. Follow your gut. Otherwise you will never learn. You won’t grow into the person you were meant to be.

“All I want is for everything to be perfect. My family. That is what I want. But can it be? We need to try harder. No one will love, accept or support you more than your mother, father, brother and sister. I am lucky. I am so lucky to have them. We are lucky to have each other. We need to realise that. I just want mum, dad, Charlie, Mary, and myself to be happy.”

Music was another deep source of happiness for Ellen. She was a gifted musician, and Violet takes great solace in the fact that she played piano the weekend she passed away. “She went all the way to level eight in piano,” says Violet. “She would play the piano in the front room, and I would just kneel down next her and listen. I know she played that weekend because her pint glass of water is on the table inside, and her music was open. I am so glad she got to play, for a little bit.”

Today, the Cassidys wrap themselves in yellow to remember Ellen. It was the colour of the dress she wore to her graduation and she was radiant in it. A yellow heart adorns the kitchen wall, photos of Ellen circle it. 

Violet and Tom are asking people to wear yellow at the Cork City Marathon this bank holiday weekend, to remember Ellen – the Cassidys will walk and run with more than 200 family and friends in her memory. They have worked closely with Cork City Council, and Ellen’s name, circled in yellow, will appear on every medal.

“Organisers are calling on the public to turn the city yellow in Ellen’s honour,” says a spokesperson for Cork City Council. “Runners, walkers, volunteers, spectators and supporters are encouraged to wear yellow, hold up yellow banners and line the streets in a vibrant show of love and solidarity for everyone taking part in Ellen’s memory. The Ellen Cassidy Perpetual Cups will be awarded for the Half Marathon, while an inaugural Ellen Cassidy Spirit of Running Award has also been established. There will be a yellow balloon release ahead of the Half Marathon start, and a yellow memorial bench will be installed along the Marina Promenade in Cork City.”

This is the reason Tom and Violet talk to Weekend today, to remember Ellen at this year’s Cork City Marathon and to raise money through a Go Fund Me for her foundation. “I just thank God,” says Violet, “that she passed doing something she loved.“

• Support The Ellen Cassidy Foundation at gofund.me/95a4c67f9