Sorry for your loss, Hilary. Might I suggest an Agave utahensis (Utah agave) as a replacement? It doesn't look anything like a parryi, but it's supposed to be hardy to 23 below zero.

Mine just finnished flowering about 3 months, and I didn't cut off the flower stalk, and to my surprise, off one off set started from where the flower stem joined the stalk, I'm letting it dry out and hope to be able to plant it in the spring to replace the mother plant. When I dig up the mama, I hope to find six little ones under the mamma. This is the miniature form, and truncated from Gentry. The surprise is that I didn't know that they would produce from the stalk. Always something to learn. Norma

Hilary, was your Agave in the ground or potted? If it was potted, it might have done better planted in-ground and heavily mulched. No added water.
Did you use a terrarium as a wind shelter? Are you going to try again?

I'm confused about zones..While browsing Hilary's Agave, they listed several hardy Agave's starting @ zone 4.
I'd love to grow Striatas, but worried they'd freeze/rot. Striata is said to be hardy from z5 and up. A few years ago I ordered 2, planted, but they didn't make the winter. They were young, so it might have been better if I'd kept in pots first, until larger.
So, when a plant is said to be hardy to zone 5, survive in temps as low as -5, do they mean plants will thrive for long -5 periods, or only a few hours? Thanks, Toni

There is clearly a major difference between being below zero for a few hours in the middle of the night, and being below zero for days on end.

This is one of the problems with going by the listed climate zones; the zone is defined principally by minimum temperature, but this does not take into account what the average temperature is.

Winter-hardy agaves can survive in places like northern Arizona and Utah, where the record low temperatures are in the -20s F. It snows on plants, and gets really cold (at least for short periods of time). But you need to remember what the climate is like there, if you live in the east. Because the air is dry and it is usually sunny, high temperatures clear freezing on most days, and it is not that common for highs to stay below the 20s. Thus, plants are not usually frozen solid for very long. Additionally, conditions are generally dry, which helps a lot for these plants.

Since I live 1-2 zones colder than most succulents get (zone 4, here, it was -22 F this morning), I can't expect many to make it through being frozen solid for several months, then dealing with mucky conditions during snowmelt. So, I'm experimenting with keeping some plants dry and cold in pots in my unheated garage, where it seems to stay between about 5 F to 30 F during the colder parts of winter.

This year, I have an Agave parryi, Nanathus transvaalensis,
Rabia albipuncta, Echinocactus texensis and a Delosperma on a windowsill in there. After a few weeks of being frozen, I brought them in and defrosted them. They were all OK except the Rabia, which turned to mush. The others went back out, and we'll see how they do in the spring.