Scarabs from Heaven

One of the Blaugust bloggers, Jedda of Notes By JCProbably, recently lost her precious dog, Cocoa. She wrote a blog post, If You See a Dragonfly, which is about how ever since Cocoa has been gone, there have been an awful lot of dragonfly sightings and how this might be a sign from Cocoa. It is a very sweet and hopeful post.

The thought of the dragonflies being a sign from a departed loved one reminded me of the pennies from heaven letters that would show up in the Dear Abby advice column. People would write in with stories about how they found pennies in unusual places, or with dates special to them or their loved one. I'm not sure but I think it might have started with this letter from a 2001 column. After that was published, pennies from heaven letters would show up every now and then in the advice column.

I am very conflicted about death and dying and the afterlife. I have no firm religious background to give me any kind of answers and, while I'm open to there being something greater than us and something beyond death, I just don't know. And because of that, I don't know how much credence I give to the pennies stories. Humans are very good at making connections that aren't really there. People might have just been seeing and believing what they needed to and wanted to. Or it could have been real. Like I said, I don't know.

And then I had my own experience.

My divorce sucked. The same year my mother unexpectedly passed away from cancer, my husband announced we were divorcing. Mom and I were estranged from most of the rest of the family so when she passed I was feeling very alone. And then on top of that, the surprise divorce. Life in general was feeling pretty overwhelming.

I had to move into a new home and one of the pieces of furniture I took with me was an entertainment unit. It was one of those big ones popular in the 90s with a central section for the TV and 2 side sections. The side sections had shelves and glass doors above and a cabinet below. I made sure the unit was completely emptied out, got it loaded onto a truck and moved it into the new house.

As one of the side sections was being wheeled through the new house, I heard something rattling. Now, I had thoroughly cleared out those units. I knew FOR A FACT that the bottom cabinets were empty. There were no shelves inside or anywhere something could get stuck. It was just a big empty space. I opened the cabinet and rolling around on the inside was a blue scarab bead.

side by side images of the front and back of a blue-green scarab bead. The left is the front, the right shows the back which has some possibly fake hieroglyphic images carved into it: a feather, a bird and a thick line under the bird.

Front and back of the mysterious scarab bead

Now one thing you've got to know about my mom is that she has always loved both ancient Egyptian art and jewelry and also beads in general. She really loved scarabs. She painted them, she drew them, she made them out of Fimo clay and Shrinky Dinks. And she was like a dragon with its hoard, as far as beads. She made some things from them but mostly she would sort them and play with them and think about what to do with them.

So - 2 things that were very much her showed up in the form of a scarab bead in what I swear was a previously empty cabinet. I wasn't looking for a sign, I was just trying to muddle through life at that point. And, really, to manifest a scarab instead of a penny would have been so ON BRAND for my mom! I still didn't know whether or not to believe this was my pennies in heaven moment but also the thought that my mom was looking out for me was very comforting.

This could just be written off as a weird happenstance BUT IT HAPPENED AGAIN! A few years later I was in the midst of a very challenging academic program for my new post-divorce career and it was do or die as far as my immediate future. Like, if I failed this program, I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to do because I had so much time and money invested in it. I was so incredibly stressed because I had so much riding on making it through this program.

I was out running errands one day and, as I came out of a store and started to cross the parking lot, I looked down and there on the asphalt was a bright, blue scarab bead. Not quite the same as the first one and a little worse for wear but still, what are the chances of coming across 2 random scarab beads? Maybe my mom really was looking after me and letting me know things would be OK.

side by side images of the front and back of a turquoise colored scarab bead. The left is the front side. The bead has been broken off at the top. The glaze is a shiny turquoise. The right shows the back of the beadwhich is unglazed and a dark green blue. There are 2 vertical lines carved in the middle, possibly meant to represent some kind of hieroglyph.

Front and back of the second mysterious scarab bead, looking a little banged up from whatever it went through before finding its way to me!

It has been almost 20 years now and no more scarab beads have appeared but I am also in a good place and don't need the reassurance of random, mysterious scarabs showing up. For now the scarabs are hanging out in my jewelry box but I think some day I'd like to have them put in a setting so I can wear them on a necklace.

What about you? Have you had any pennies from heaven moments in the form of pennies, scarabs, dragonflies or something else?

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