A couple of days later, Agatha suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized due to an alleged heart attack. Despite that, nothing changed, and none of her four kids visited her.

A few more days down the line, all four children received a message stating that Agatha had passed on. Within hours, they all arrived at their mother’s home to discuss how they would share the inheritance.

“Will you guys give all that a rest and focus on what has brought us all together — the death of our beloved mother!” the youngest daughter, Mary, shouted at some point.

There was a brief pause at her outburst, but as soon as the silence was broken by a phone buzzing, they returned to dividing up their mom’s wealth.

Unknown to them, Agatha’s friend, Sharon, was listening in on their conversation and, after waiting a few minutes, walked into the living room where they all sat, to tell them it was time to say their final goodbyes to their mother.

The eldest, Brian, went first. But as he entered, he did not see a coffin, but he did see his mother, and unlike what they had been told, she was alive and well.

She told him about her friend’s plan, but Brian failed to see the point of pulling such an extreme prank. Agatha told him a few encouraging things and about how happiness could exist without money.

After their talk, she asked him to leave the room but not tell anyone about what had happened. The same situation was repeated with the first daughter, Sally, and then with John, who came out weeping.

At that point, Mary, who had not been able to get anything out of her siblings after they exited the room, began to suspect that something was amiss.

When she walked into the room and saw her mom alive and well, she screamed in happiness and ran into her arms. “I thought we lost you,” she sobbed. “How is this happening?”

She was shocked and glad that her mother was alive and it showed Agatha that Mary was the one who had enough sadness regarding her demise.

“If I had to quickly determine the person who will receive all my properties, it would be Mary,” Agatha told them later.

“But I believe in you all, so I hope that this has really taught you a lesson.” Nobody answered for the longest time as they thought about how terrible their past actions had been. “Because I believe in your ability to change, I will make sure to divide the inheritance equally between all of you.”

That day turned the lives of all four children around, and they started to call more often and visit Agatha on the weekends.

When the holidays came, they celebrated as a big and happy family, making Agatha very proud. The old woman died 15 years later, and as promised, her wealth was divided up between all the children.

Sometime later, Agatha’s children reached a joint decision to honor their mother by using her wealth to fund the building of a shelter where less fortunate people could come together to celebrate the holidays.

What did we gain from this story?

Sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures. Agatha resorted to Sharon’s plan when she saw no way to solve the problem of her estrangement from her kids. It worked like a charm, bringing them together faster than Agatha’s budding frustration could have done.

Family is important. Agatha wanted nothing more than the opportunity to spend more time with her kids because she knew that she was not going to be around forever. She just wanted to make enough memories to take with her, and who better to make them with than her flesh and blood.