In honour of Ellen Kelly Lill
Ellen Kelly Lill - 7th March 1954 to 3rd September 2023
Ellen Kelly Lill was Co-founder Tom Lill’s beloved Maman, my hard-to-live-up-to Mother-in-Law, and our children’s fun-loving and super Scottish Granny. It is with great sadness that we announce her passing, and with such gratitude that we extend our thanks to her friends and family for choosing to support the EI Cure Project in her honour. Ellen’s too-short life was sadly stunted by cancer, and for the last 6 years her once vibrant body and brilliant mind have had to rest at home. Now that she is at peace, we are relieved for her to have gained back her freedom, but we are sad that her life with us was cut short. Ellen was truly a phenomenal person, and our lives were all richer as a result of her presence.
We are truly humbled to have received just over £1000 in donations for the EI Cure Project at this sad time, but we understand that these donations show everyone’s recognition that had she been able, Ellen would have danced from the rooftops to announce her support for our cause, and would have done absolutely anything in her power to help us reach our goal! Thank you to everyone who has chosen to honour her infallible spirit-for-a-good-cause by donating to us, we are so very thankful.
With that in mind, in the following paragraphs, I would like to pay tribute to Ellen and give everyone who has so generously donated another moment to pause and think of Ellen and the amazing daughter, sister, teacher, friend, volunteer, wife, mother, aunt, and grandmother that she was throughout her life-time.
Ellen started out her life in Scotland within the tenements of the great city of Glasgow, she was born on the 7th of March 1954 to parents Terry and Dorothy Kelly. Ellen was one of 6 children, which included siblings Mary-Margaret, Terry, Dorry-Ann, Andrew, and Matthew.
Ellen’s Father Terry worked as a printer and her Mother Dorothy worked in the well-known Barras Market in Glasgow centre, and also ran her own clothes shop (Pictured below). Both parents worked hard to ensure that Ellen and her siblings had everything they needed for a happy childhood in a loving family home.
According to her Dad, Ellen was “Always on the go”, she was always doing something or going somewhere, and she usually did this at pace and with complete determination. She liked to keep herself busy. From a young age, it was clear that Ellen was extremely intelligent and excelled at everything at school. She secured a place at Strathclyde University to study Psychology. This was a huge achievement for a young girl from a working-class family in Glasgow during the early 1970’s, and her parents were understandably extremely proud of their daughter and her academic achievements.
After University Ellen made the first of many moves over the coming years of her adult life, and she took a summer job working in a bar up in the Cairngorms in Scotlands National Park. It was here that Ellen met future husband Jeff who was also working a summer job in Scotland. At the end of the summer, Jeff secured a job as a teacher in Birmingham, and Ellen began her training to become a teacher. Once qualified, she left her beloved Scotland and moved to be with Jeff in Birmingham. They were married on the 3rd of July in 1976.
After their wedding, they moved to Saint Moritz to work as ski instructors, and then onto Sophia Antipolis in the South of France. This is where Ellen secured a job at an international school, which she famously did by writing a poem for the application instead of the usual letter.
Life during this phase was wonderful for Ellen. She made many friends and colleagues within the community, and soon their family began to grow. First son Tom was born in 1981, followed by Matthew in 1982. The whole family have fond memories of life in the South of France. It was an idyllic place to bring up children. Ellen and Jeff remained there for 11 years until another exciting teaching opportunity arose during the summer of 1989. The family relocated to Houston Texas, and it was here that Ellen and Jeff welcomed their third son Jeffrey-Junior or JJ, and their family was complete.
Over the years that followed, Ellen and Jeff lived and worked in many more locations, including Canada and the Cayman Islands, but finally Ellen and the boys settled in Willerby, East Yorkshire where Ellen continued to teach at various local schools and schools for children with learning disabilities.
Ellen was a talented and resourceful teacher, and was loved by many of her students. She received many letters of gratitude for changing the lives of many a troubled student in her time.
Ellen’s boys had a very happy childhood, and they describe Ellen as a mum who was extremely loving, kind, and cuddly. She showed patience and support for any problem she was presented with, although the boys always knew they’d taken things too far when her Glaswegian accent came out full-tilt!
The boys spent their childhood years with Ellen playing games, reading, going on walks and spending days at the beach, and generally having fun. Family was always incredibly important to Ellen and she loved nothing more than a good family gathering. The family spent many of their holidays travelling back home to visit family in Scotland or East Yorkshire. Ellen was one of those people who always remembered to send a card and a gift for someone’s birthday, and she was always the first to find an opportunity for a family get-together. This was no mean feat considering the size of her family in Scotland.
Ellen always made time for her boys, and she would always provide a kind ear, and a shoulder to cry on even when they had all outgrown her. Ellen was a constant within her 3 boys' lives and it is most certainly thanks to her that they are all the young men they are today. Family always meant everything to Ellen, and she was delighted when her 3 sons met their partners, and the prospect of grandchildren came her way. Ellen was also delighted to have 3 new daughters-in-law to spend time with, and I always felt lucky to have found a Mother-in-Law who I felt I could talk to about anything. I don’t think there was anything that couldn’t be resolved with a coffee, or a walk and a chat with Ellen.
Watching her health decline, and the loss of the sparkle from her eyes, has been one of the hardest things her family and friends have ever had to endure. Seeing a once vibrant, intelligent, loving, and witty woman reduced to someone who is unable to talk or move for themselves, is quite simply one of the worst things you could ever imagine. The odds for Ellen’s struggle with cancer were steeply stacked against her from the very beginning, and whilst she threw herself into doing everything she could to swing things in her favour, she very quickly found that any of her efforts would not make a difference. Sadly her breast cancer spread to her brain very early into her diagnosis, and the treatments for her brain disease saved her life and bought her more time, but ultimately left her paralysed and unable to communicate. Her cancer journey was a long and arduous one, and we are relieved that she is now at peace.
Now that she has passed, and her mind and body are finally free and at peace together, our family and her countless friends can remember her exactly as she was when she was alive. Her cancer did not define her, and the phenomenal spirit that was Ellen Kelly Lill now lives on, bold and bright in her children and her many grandchildren. The kindness that we see in Margaux and Delphine; the great sense of right and wrong that we see in Sébastien; the joy of life that we see in Emmie and Thibaux; and the fierce determination and stealth that we see in Arienne are all because of her. Your children and grandchildren are a credit to you Ellen, and we will do our very best to keep your memory alive through them.
Thank you so much for everyone who chose to make a donation to the EI Cure Project in honour of Ellen, please know that by doing so you have chosen to secure an even brighter future for Arienne, and others in the world just like her. Ellen would have done everything she possibly could to support this cause, and I hope that by sharing her story that we might encourage others to consider having a memorial donation dedicated to the EI Cure Project too.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to learn about my wonderful Mother-in-Law, and I’ll leave you with a photo of her legacy. These are Ellen’s grandchildren on one of the last days we all got to see their Granny. We love you Ellen, you can rest easy now, you are at peace xxxxxx
Ellen’s six grandchildren (In order, left to right): Sébastien, Arienne, Delphine, Margaux, Thibaux, and Emmie
