The MBA and the "retracted gift" story

I might as well tell this story: Twilah was an extremely intelligent lady who should have gone to university. She did not but instead decided to get her MBA from the University of Athabasca in Alberta. She aced all her assignments with A+ and the lowest grade of an A- on one paper. She managed to do all this while working at a time in her career with a lot of travel and relocating from the US to Canada and back. A little more than half way through the 2 year course she was diagnosed with cancer. She continued her studies and maintained her high scores. She finally had to withdraw from the course just prior to completing her final paper which would have been on her project of merging two companies. She did not tell the University she had been diagnosed as Stage IV.

Last November her father phoned the University, explained the history of why Twilah had withdrawn and asked that based on the strength of her high marks could they not see a way to award her diploma. They phoned Foster back within a week and agreed Twilah should be awarded her diploma and they would send it to her by courier on December 15th. They asked permission to phone Twilah first and let her know. We later found out from Twilah that she took their call while in a used book store with her daughter, sat down and cried. It was a great Christmas gift for Twilah because she worked so hard for her MBA.

Her Aunt Lou in Montreal felt Twilah deserved a bit more recognition of this achievement and bought a congratulations card together with a Canadian Postal money order for $100.00 US and mailed it to Twilah in January. She never heard if Twilah got her gift. After Twilah died Aunt Lou went to the post office and filed a claim for the lost money order. She waited the allotted time and the post office finally paid her back the $100.00. However in May the post office contacted Aunt Lou to let her know the original money order had been cashed in April, would send her a copy and expected to be paid back. Aunt Lou told the post office that it had been cashed by someone other than her neice because it was cashed after she died. It had been deposited into Phil’s bank account. The post office was now looking at a fraud case. Aunt Lou asked the post office to hold off on the case until she had the opportunity to get the money back. She phoned Phil and told him that it was a gift for Twilah not him and wanted the money returned. He told her that Twilah never saw the card so he took the money and deposited it in the bank. He agreed to mail it back to her. She received his check within two weeks and written on the cheque was “retracted gift”. Tacky! Now I know why I never heard from Twilah on other things that were sent to her, she was never given them.

Peggy Richardson
Twilah's step-mother