“Even anxious pups need the moon.”

https://open.spotify.com/track/77fL8ATR0dpUDLI0XLmDBV?si=d11d9d04c3ac4b8f

tw: death. February, 2025.

It was midnight when Atlas woke Alexa up, and she was greeted with Atlas’ cry.

Puspa had passed away in her sleep.

After Kai’s wedding, her health declined rapidly—as though she was collecting every last ounce of her strength to go see her most awaited wish get fulfilled, and when the light turned off, when every guests had returned to their house, she gave up. Cancer had spread throughout her body with no mercy, and the immunotherapy only did so much. The therapy felt more of a tool to stretch out time for them, and the line got thinner and thinner each time.

The thing about death of sickness was you sort of saw it coming, but at the same time, you also didn’t. She kept surviving all these episodes, the relapses, so when she got worse again for the nth time, Atlas always thought she would’ve survived this one too. When she didn’t, he put the blame on himself: I should’ve prayed harder.

For someone who had such little faith, Atlas had tried to pray every prayers he could think of, to every god there was. He bargained time to borrow him some more, for her pain to ease away whenever it had gotten too much, for the sickness to at least subside. Puspa’s acceptance of her condition didn’t help—he was partly mad at that.

Why was she so accepting of it? There were options of medication to explore, they had not gotten second or third opinion, and an acquaintance of his just connect them to a well-known doctor in Penang.

Regret was never easy to befriend, especially when he was sure that they could have done things better. Atlas saw the lifeless body before him, and he couldn’t comprehend how this body was just a shell to someone who was warm and full of life.

People tried to comfort him with the knowledge that she was no longer in pain, and it made him feel so selfish because yes she wasn’t in pain anymore, but what about this pain inside of me?

Death was final and unforgiving; but above all, it was both cruel and kind.

Kai already went back to New York few weeks after his wedding so it took some time to find earliest flight when he heard the news. He arrived two days later, disheveled and unshaved. Despite the tension and their painful farewell, he couldn’t help himself when Atlas offered a hug. They were friends first, two people who had shared Puspa’s life, the ones whose grief could never be understood by others.

Puspa had mentioned in her will that she wanted to be cremated and for her ash to be spread in the ocean. She jokingly added that she initially wanted her ash to spread on a crater of active volcanoes, “just like how fire is scared of water, so am I; but ashes in the mountain only stay where they are, so I’d settle to travel the world with the fishes.”

So here they were, somewhere in Java sea, standing above open water, ready for their final goodbye.

Alexa sent strength through the squeeze of her hand after Atlas poured away the remaining of Puspa’s ashes into the sea. He replied her with the same gesture as he tried to convey gratitude as much as he could.

“I’m sorry that you had to lose your mother twice.”

Atlas smiled bitterly.

“The cost of being too blessed, I guess. The more I have, the more I could lose. In the end, nothing ever matters because nothing ever belongs to me. I don’t even belong to myself.” He stared at the open sea; the waves were dancing, as though they were welcoming someone who now had become one with them. “Mama Puspa wrote in her book that she believed we all belong to something greater than just this world. That’s why people need to hold onto something—faith, beliefs, rituals, deities. She had seen all, tasted all, didn’t recommend one. But until the end, she only held onto one thing that was unchanging.”