YouTube star Melanie Ham has died after a long, brave battle with cancer — and just days before her 16th anniversary with her beloved husband. She was just 36 years old.
Ham, who had over 800,000 subscribers on YouTube, was popular on the video-sharing site for posting videos about knitting, quilting, crochet, and related content.
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In May 2020, she revealed to her followers that she’d been diagnosed with epithelioid angiomyolipoma, a very rare sarcoma cancer which develops in the bones and soft tissues. Now, following her death this month, her husband announced the news and mourned his beloved wife with a heartbreaking post on her official Instagram account.
Writing about his “sweet, amazing, beautiful wife,” her husband Robert wrote:
“It is with a heavy heart and deep sadness I share the news of the passing of my sweet, amazing, beautiful wife Melanie. If you’ve been following our journey I’m sure you were, like us, hopeful she could defeat this insidious disease. Over the past few months things have been progressively getting worse and we’re thankful that we made it to this point through the holidays and tried to make every moment count. We are short 9 days of our 16 year anniversary. My family, our doctors, our nurses and especially Melanie fought until the end and did all we could do to avoid today, but that is not our path. Let me reassure all those rooting for us, Melanie fought like a warrior queen.”
Just awful. Robert added more about his partner, too:
“Despite the deep grief my family and I feel today we want to celebrate an amazing woman and a life well-lived. She loved passionately, created beautifully, provided abundantly and was my best friend all the way to the end. There will be more details about a ceremony shortly. Please feel free to share your own photos, memories and projects of Melanie that inspired you through the years. She was an extraordinary woman and God has another beautiful angel. She can now walk, and sing, and dance in a way her body did not allow over the last few months. She relied on her faith in Jesus all the way to the end and she will always be with me.”
Our hearts break.
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Now, Robert has announced that the family will be holding a celebration of life event for Melanie on Saturday in their Southern California community.
As he sweetly notes in the post (below), “colorful attire is encouraged” to remember the vibrant wife and mother:
Such an awful, awful tragedy.
Our hearts break for Melanie’s family, friends, and loved ones as they mourn her untimely death.
R.I.P.
[Image via Melanie Ham/Instagram]