PART 1: I WON $300 MILLION, THEN TESTED MY CHILDREN BY ASKING FOR HELP WITH MY MEDICINE

PART 1 — MY CHILDREN REFUSED TO HELP, BUT MY GRANDSON OFFERED EVERYTHING

Not my problem, mom.

Deal with it yourself. Those words came from my own son before he hung up on me. I sat there holding my phone, knowing I had $300 million sitting in my bank account, and I smiled. My boy Richard had just failed the biggest test of his whole life, and he didn’t even know it yet. I bet you’re asking yourself how a 68-year-old grandma from Michigan ended up with all this money while testing her own kids like some kind of strange game. Well, let me take you back to where everything started four weeks ago on a Wednesday morning that turned my whole world upside down.

My name is Margaret Chen, and I’ve been playing the same six lottery numbers for seventeen years. Those numbers are special to me: My husband’s birthday before he died, the day we got married, and the day my sweet grandson Tommy was

born. Some folks call it silly, some call it a waste of money. My friend Betty from next door always laughed at me, “Margaret, you have better odds of getting hit by lightning twice while riding a bike.” She’d tell me every single week as I walked to Joe’s Mini Mart to buy my ticket. That Wednesday started just like every other day.

I was drinking my tea and watching the morning show when they started reading the Powerball numbers. I wasn’t really listening at first until I heard the number eight, then 17, then 29. My hands started shaking as I grabbed my ticket from where I always kept it stuck to my fridge with a magnet. Every single number matched up perfectly. $300 million. Even after the government took their share, I still had over $180 million left. That’s more money than I could spend if I live

to be 200 years old. My first thought was to call Richard my son. Then I thought about calling Susan my daughter.

Then I wanted to tell little Tommy, though he’s not so little anymore at twenty years old. I wanted to share this miracle with the people I love most in this world. But something stopped me cold. Maybe it was remembering last Thanksgiving when Susan whispered to her husband about how I was taking up space in a house too big for one person. Maybe it was Richard always dropping hints about me moving into a smaller apartment because I’m getting old. Or maybe something deep inside me knew I needed to be careful. So, I decided to wait. For four whole weeks, I kept quiet.

I met with lawyers and money people and set up special accounts. I planned everything very carefully. Then, I decided to do

a little test. If my children really loved me, they would help their mother when she needed it most, right? Even if they thought I had nothing to give back, the test was really simple. I would call both my kids and tell them I needed help paying for my medicine for my blood pressure, then wait to see what they did. The medicine story wasn’t completely made up.

I do take pills for my blood pressure and they do cost a lot of money, but now with all this money, paying for medicine wasn’t hard anymore. But finding out if my kids loved me, that was about to become very difficult. But what Susan said on the phone wasn’t even the worst part of my test. Richard’s answer was somehow even more heartbreaking than his sister’s mean words. When I called him with the same story about needing money for my blood pressure pills, he didn’t even let me finish talking. “Mom, I can’t keep doing this,” he said in that annoying voice he uses when he thinks he knows everything.

“You need to learn how to live with less money. Can’t keep doing this.” I almost laughed out loud. The woman who raised him by herself after his father passed away, who worked at two different jobs to send him to college, was getting a lecture about money from a man whose student loans I secretly paid off six years ago. Richard, I’m not asking for much. Just enough to buy my medicine until my check comes next month. I kept my voice calm even though inside my heart was breaking into pieces. Look, Mom, Susan and I have been talking about this. You’re getting older and maybe it’s time to think about some changes.

Have you looked at those senior homes we showed you? They give you all your medicine, all your food, everything you need. Susan and I have been talking about this. So, my own children were making plans for my life behind my back. How very thoughtful of them. I’ll think about it, I told him, even though I had already heard more than enough. But Richard wasn’t done teaching me his lesson yet. “And Mom, I’m going to block your number for a while. Susan thinks we’re being too nice, and I think she might be right. Sometimes people need tough love to face the real world.”

Then the phone went silent. My own son had just blocked his mother instead of helping her buy medicine she needs to stay alive. I sat in my kitchen, the same kitchen where I had cleaned Richard’s scraped knees and helped him with his homework, where I had cheered for Susan’s good report cards and held her when she cried about her divorce. The lottery ticket was still stuck to my refrigerator, worth more money than everyone on my street would make in their whole lives. And my own children wanted to put me in an old folks home instead of helping me pay for pills.

But Tommy, my grandson Tommy, had always been different from them. He was Susan’s boy, but somehow he didn’t act selfish like her. He was the one who called me just to talk, who remembered when my birthday was without needing Facebook to remind him, who still gave me big hugs when he came to visit. Surely Tommy would pass my test. I picked up my phone with shaking hands and called his number. He answered right away, and I could hear cars driving by in the background. Grandma Margaret, what’s going on? His voice sounded so happy to hear from me.

Tommy, sweetie, I hate to bother you, but I’m in trouble. I told him the same story about needing money for my blood pressure medicine. There was a pause and my heart started to feel heavy. Then he said words that changed everything. How much do you need? I have about $400 saved up and I can drive to your house this weekend. Are you okay? Do you need me to take you to see a doctor? $400? That was probably every penny he had saved from his part-time job working at the school library.

He was offering me all his emergency money without even thinking twice. And he wanted to drive 500 miles just to check on me. “Oh, honey, I can’t take your money,” I said as tears ran down my face. “Grandma, you’ve never asked me for anything ever. If you need help, I’m coming. No arguing about it.” After I hung up, I knew exactly what I needed to do. Tommy had passed the test with flying colors, as they say. But his mother and uncle, they were about to learn a very expensive lesson about treating family right.