“…she was so funny, just so, so funny, and just to not have her now, it just breaks my heart.”
Kirby Emerson completed Cwmbran Parkrun on Saturday 29 August- the final three miles of a 60-mile challenge to raise money for the Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Association.
Her wife Cherise died in May 2025 from MND- just one week after falling unwell.
Kirby, from Monmouth, told Cwmbran Life: “I am here in the very lovely, very damp, Cwmbran Boating Lake to celebrate my last three miles of my 60-mile challenge. I lost my very beautiful wife Cherise Emerson to Motor Neurone Disease (MND) back in May last year. She battled a really, really short time, to be honest. She struggled with her breathing, and we rushed her to A&E and then six days later, she was diagnosed with MND, and then she died on the seventh day so it was just horrifying.
“It just happened so quickly and I just lost the most important person to me. It took me a while to be okay and to get into a place again where I wanted to do something in her memory.
“I’m certainly not a runner at all. I couldn’t run for longer than 30 seconds a good few weeks ago. I think this is like my sixth or seventh Parkrun, but I’ve just thrown myself into it. I’ve started going to a run club. I’ve started running around Monmouth, Cwmbran, and Usk.
60-mile challenge
“I’ve taken up the MND Association’s challenge of running 60 miles in August to raise as much funds as we possibly can. I feel that there’s not enough funding, and there’s not a cure. You know a lot of the care is just not enough. It’s really not enough. Cherise had certain signs that were sort of dismissed that weren’t clear, and with more research and more funding, there can be better help and better support for people like my wife and hopefully one day a cure so nobody has to go through the pain that we have now as a family without her.”
She had “amazing support” from her friends and family along with a “group of my girls” from Usk’s ‘Run With Rob’ club, and Rob Simon, the coach who she described as a “constant Mr Motivator”, and volunteers from the South East Wales MND Group.
Kirby thanked them for turning up in the wet weather, adding: “I’ve been so lucky and I feel awful for them because the weather today has been horrendous. We have been blessed all month with the most unreal sunshine and then the final three miles, yeah, we get this. I’m still just really lucky that they all came down. I’ve bribed them all with hot chocolate at the end.
“It’s been so emotional. I didn’t realise just how emotional it would be, but yeah, I can’t believe I’ve done it. I’ve actually run 60 miles.”
‘Adventurous’
Kirby told how Cherise was “adventurous” whereas she was less active.
She said: “I was definitely the lazy one. She would literally get the dogs up crazy early on a Sunday morning and by the time I rang her to see where she was, she was halfway up Pen y Fan. She was just an incredible woman. She worked really hard, managed to retire at a nice age, and then she just went on to help people.
Samaritans Cymru
“She became the regional director for the Samaritans, just dedicated her whole life to helping people and she was just incredible. She became an author and wrote the most amazing stories and she was just so insightful, so intelligent and she was so funny, just so, so funny and just to not have her now, it just breaks my heart.
The pair met through the suicide prevention charity.
“I joined the charity, very similar to Cherise,” said Kirby. “I just wanted to make a difference to people. You know we all have times of need and we all have times where we need somebody to talk to, and I really wanted to get involved in that.
“I ended up getting involved in the fundraising side of things as well, and that was when I was privileged enough to meet my wife. She was just infectious. She was just the most kindest, caring person who, literally up until her dying day, would put everybody before herself, so I’m so lucky to have had her for the years that I had her. Now my ethos is to keep that going, to keep her memory alive, to keep spreading awareness of this awful, awful, disease that robs people of their lives.
“More money needs to be put in, more funding, more research. But that all comes from funding and from people like us, so I’ll be sure to be shouting from the rooftops how incredible they are.”
Sponsor Kirby
You can sponsor Kirby’s 60-mile challenge for MND using this link.