“I’m not going to beat you over the head with some life lesson gleaned while being in the realm of the sick,” Meredith Blake of Montclair, N.J., wrote before her death, from low-grade serous ovarian cancer, in hospice care on July 15. “So I’ll keep it simple. I loved life! Even on my darkest days, I felt incredibly lucky and never lost sight of everything I got to experience in the time I had. When I look back over my life, it makes me smile . . . and that’s all we want in the end, isn’t it?”
A part-time resident of Amagansett since 2015, Ms. Blake was 52 and had been ill for three years with the rare form of cancer.
Later in life, after her diagnosis, Ms. Blake turned to exercise as an outlet. She became a regular at DanceBody classes here and at fitness studios in Montclair, “inspiring many as she exercised through surgical recovery, chemotherapy, and the many challenges brought on by illness,” her husband, Mark Blake, wrote. “We joked that she was the healthiest person we know who also had cancer.”
She had a career in the fashion industry when she was younger, having graduated in 1994 from Cornell University with a degree in textiles and apparel. She even designed her own wedding dress for the occasion of her September 2000 marriage to Mr. Blake.
She had also worked for a trade publication, held jobs in consulting and marketing — including for Veuve Clicquot — and for a time managed a Great Neck retail store called Circe and the Sirens. But when her children were born, she stepped away from work to raise them.
“Meredith was incredibly selfless, grounding our family and providing her husband and children with a warm and loving home,” her family wrote. “This came through most clearly in the past few years as she showed an unrelenting focus on them and their needs even as she managed the pain and personal challenges that come with cancer, all while maintaining her sense of humor.”
She was born in Oceanside on Dec. 15, 1971, to Donald Anderson and the former Lois Bochan. She grew up in Merrick, where her parents continue to live, and frequently visited Montauk as a child.
Ms. Blake traveled to Italy, Portugal, Spain, Amsterdam, and Costa Rica, with a particular fondness for France. She once bungee-jumped off the Kawarau Bridge in New Zealand after some gentle heckling by the local operators over her fear of heights, according to her husband.
She also had a competitive streak in games like Wordle, Bananagrams, and Ping-Pong. She had a taste for good champagne and fine dining, and turned that into excellent home cooking skills, her family said.
“Adorably,” her husband wrote, “she started each day with a coffee and something chocolate.”
In addition to her husband and parents, Ms. Blake leaves two children, Aspen Blake and Natalie Blake, both of Montclair, a sister, Susan Anderson of Naples, Fla., and her two dogs, Mooch and Mosey.
Her family has suggested memorial donations to the STAAR Ovarian Cancer Foundation at 230 East Ohio Street, Suite 410-1185, Chicago 60611.
