It was 2008 when we found them. JD and I were particularly broke that year after losing our home in the Housing Crisis. Truth be told, we were a few months out from bankruptcy, and the only reason we had a roof over our heads (albeit a double-wide) was because we had presented the landlord with a slightly altered copy of our credit report – fingers crossed they would take it instead of running a report themselves. It worked. We moved our family into a swamp-cooled house with wheels, asked God to forgive us, and did our best to shield our financial circumstances from the kids.
My mother was the one who invited us. “I reserved two campsites,” she had said. “And no, I will NOT let you pay for half. Just…fill your tank and pack some food…and let’s go.”
Sue-meg State Park was a family camping spot for us, a place where the ocean and redwoods collided. Going camping meant deciding which bills to ignore in order to buy the gas and food for the trip. It was one of those moments where, if our ship had to go down (and it did), we would at least enjoy a camping trip – a kind of last meal.
There’s a place at the campsite called Agate Beach, and we spent a large portion of our days there on our bellies, eyes scanning as we filtered rocks through our hands, searching for white agates. We found only a few each day, inspecting them like gems held to the sun, our heads tilting together to evaluate their translucency and silica-rich bands while the kids chased each other with bull-kelp whips.
The white ones were hard to find, but there was something inside the hyperfixation of hunting for them that carried our stresses away, leaving behind only the things that mattered, our love and loyalty, our family, and those magical little agates.
Outside of that bubble, beyond the switchback trails leading upward towards cliffs lined with redwoods that stand like ancient spirits – the world carried on with its traffic and news and deadlines. But we were protected there, for just a moment. Still today, I wear on my wrist a string of colored beads from Sue-meg. Banded around my water canister is a sticker of silhouetted pines to remind me of those same woods. When I am in great need of rest – I let my mind go there, and I can still hear the sounds of our hands moving over those small glassy rocks in the sand.
We brought the agates home with us.
When he was alive, he would give agates to me on days when I had lost my confidence in something – my teaching abilities, my writing abilities, my parenting abilities, you name it. I would find one on the dashboard of my truck, or on the kitchen windowsill, in my make-up bag, beside my dinner plate. It was a sign, something only we understood. It said different things depending on the circumstance. It said – here is hope, here is magic, here is a moment in time where the only thing that mattered was our love. And sometimes, it said – you can do this. Keep going. Screw what everybody else thinks. Keep believing.
After he died, I kept finding them – in his Jeep, on his desk, in his nightstand, on the ledge along the top of the shower, on the tops of our garden fence posts, and in some of our flowerpots. They meant nothing to anyone – except me. These are the privileges of personal relationships. You know things, inside jokes, gestures only you will understand. You know what agates mean.
So – I will not attempt to explain all the “agates” that God has sent me over the last five-and-a-half years of this grief journey, especially regarding the last two months of moving, selling my house, and quitting my job. You will not understand what the agates mean. You will not see how God has used the agates to guide me, protect me, give me peace, prepare me, and direct my every move. You will only see rocks.
About Sonney Wolfe
Sonney Wolfe is a writer, educator, mother, nona (grandma), and widow. She holds a Master of Arts in English, teaches academic and professional writing for the University of Maryland, and writes features, press releases, blog posts, and personal essays for various news and social media.
Widowed in December of 2019, she soon joined the masses in COVID lockdowns, which deepened her understanding of grief as she witnessed widespread loss, especially among students. Now, she integrates grief support in her college classrooms by addressing pandemic disruptions, community loss, and mental health challenges. Her autobiographical teaching philosophy, born from her own grief journey, provides a platform to share her experiences and support students who have also lost loved ones.
In her professional writing, she sheds light on the human experience of loss and grief, particularly for widows. She explores the complex societal shift they face, transitioning from wives to widows and often single parents. This sudden change forces widows to navigate not only grief, but also a landslide of challenges: income loss, economic strain, relocation, career shifts, altered healthcare needs, and declining mental health.
Her Blog WIM Dispatches (Woman in Motion), https://sonneywolfe.com, chronicles her personal grief journey and advocates for the needs of widows, along with her IG: @WIM_Dispatches – and Facebook page: WIM Dispatches Life After Jay.