“Stay with me, Olive. Publish this tomb with me. It’s not too late to start over.”
It is so enticing to imagine that my life might have been different. That it still could be. But even as Wyatt reaches for my hand, I know what I have to tell him.
Like Akhenaton, we can pretend. We can squirrel ourselves away in Deir el-Bersha, just the two of us. We can spin an epic story of how we were always meant to be. But also like Akhenaton, we will never really be able to go backward.
I pull away, escaping into another chamber of the tomb as I press the heels of my hands to my eyes. I can’t do this. I can’t walk away from him twice.
I hear him come into the chamber behind me. I am in the room where Meketaton, the second daughter of Akhenaton, was buried. She died near the thirteenth or fourteenth year of her father’s reign. In the scene carved into the plaster on the walls, she is lying dead on a bier, as Akhenaton and Nefertiti hold each other and weep over her body. It is the most breathtaking portrait of grief.
A second scene shows Akhenaton and Nefertiti again tearing out their hair in the act of mourning—nwn—in front of Meketaton’s standing mummy or statue. In this image, a baby is being led away by a nurse.
When I was studying Egyptology, there was a lot of discussion about that baby, and who it might be. Some scholars said this proved Meketaton died in childbirth—and that the father was her own father, Akhenaton. But Meketaton died at age eleven, which was likely too young to be pregnant, even then. Some said the baby was Tutankhamun (then called Tutankhaton), although there was a question about a nearby determinative hieroglyph, which may show a seated female rather than a seated male. Others believed it was Meketaton herself, reborn under the healing rays of the Aton—the only way to show an afterlife, since there was no reference to Osiris or Re during Akhenaton’s rule.
Although, academically, that baby is most likely Tutankhaton, I prefer the last analysis. Depending on your point of view, Akhenaton might be seen as a king, a narcissist, a visionary—but he wasdefinitelya grieving father. In his heart, he would have wanted his daughter resurrected. To me, this is the only interpretation that hints at hope.
When you have a child, you will do anything for her. You may not do it well, but you will kill yourself trying. You will trip over obstacles as you clear them out of her path. You will give her the choices you didn’t have.
I move closer to the image of Meketaton’s parents, bent with sorrow. This is the remarkable part of history. As different as my life is now from that of an Egyptian pharaoh, I know what it feels like to wake up in a world where I have a daughter, and the next day, to face a future where I may not.
It’s why I can’t stay here.
The most difficult job I have ever had as a death doula was also the shortest. I was hired by a couple who knew that they were having a baby that would be born without a brain. You would think this was a fresh level of hell—having to carry to term a fetus that wasn’t going to survive. But in this case, you’d be wrong. The mom used to love her OB visits, because hearing that heartbeat was the time she got to spend with her daughter. She said that when she had to get up at 2:00A.M. to pee, she pretended those were her daughter’s ornery teenage years—she was just living through them now.
I told this couple that I didn’t want their birth plan—I wanted theirlifeplan. If the baby survived five minutes, what was most important? Who would be in the delivery room? If the baby survived five hours, who could visit? If the baby survived five days, would they want to bring her home?
They said they wanted to celebrate every major holiday, in the time they had. They wanted her first year, in a matter of moments. So I hired a photographer. We took pictures of the baby in a Santa onesie, and with a Baby New Year sash, and with a little paper Valentine’s heart. We knew when her grandparents could hold her, what music they wanted playing, when their priest should come in to administer last rites. The baby’s name was Felicity. She lived for thirty-seven minutes.
I have told this story to many people who ask me how I can possibly work with those who are dying. There is beauty and grace at the end, I tell them, even for babies like Felicity. She never experienced war, heartbreak, or pain. She never struggled to make ends meet. She didn’t get bullied in school or find out she had been passed over for a promotion or get left at the altar. She knew nothing in her short life but love.
I don’t know why, when it comes to death, we say welostsomeone. They’re not missing or misplaced. They’re whisked away from the tightest embrace.
In a world where some parents don’t get the choice to keep their children close, I can’t leave mine just so I can have a second chance with Wyatt.
I turn around, knowing that he is waiting. “You know what’s the hardest part of watching someone die? The people who are left behind.”
“That’s why you should stay, Olive,” Wyatt interrupts. “I love you.”
“I know.” All these years, and here I am repeating myself. Tears stream down my face. “But you’re not the only oneIlove. Even if I could leave him…I couldn’t leave her.”
“Your daughter.”
“Yes. Meret.” I take a deep breath. “After Meretseger.”
Wyatt is one of the few people I don’t have to explain this to. The cobra-headed goddess of the peak, she was associated with the mountain above the Valley of Kings. The name meansShe Who Loves Silence,and she was worshipped by the workers from Deir el-Medina who built the royal tombs. She would blind or strike down those who stole or committed a crime, but she could also be merciful.
It had been hard to find an Ancient Egyptian deity who had, at her heart, forgiveness. “People screw up,” I tell Wyatt. “We make mistakes and bad decisions and piss off the people we care about, and if we’re lucky, a goddess like Meretseger takes pity on us.” I meet his gaze, and finally say what I came all this way to say. “That’s why I named our daughter after her.”
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO,when I had left Egypt during theneshni,when the roads had flooded and Wyatt drove me to the airport in Cairo, I felt sick. Once or twice I even thought I’d have to ask him to pull over. Now, looking back, I know it wasn’t anxiety.
Wyatt and I had used condoms with the exception of that first night, so what were the odds?
The same odds, I supposed, as those of finding a painted rock inscription in the middle of a desert.
The same odds as those of falling in love with the person you thought you hated.
The same odds as those of finding a soul mate.
I think of the Coffin Texts, Spell 148:Lightning flashes; the gods become afraid. Isis awakens being pregnant.
