The Diala’s Covid Windfall

donvy
6 min readMay 17, 2024

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In Memoriam:

Guillerma ‘#Emma’ Vytiaco-Diala ✝︎

Feb 10, 1935 — Apr 18, 2021

Let us take a walk down memory lane to the time when Tatay’s sister, Guillerma Diala, was fighting for her life at St. Luke’s due to Covid-19 in 2021…

Monetary amounts are all presented as screenshots from their original messaging sources. These are all supported by facts. Facts that were provided directly by @Hannah Diala Sarmiento no less.

I will make extensive use of the only dialect that every member of my family respects and worships: MONEY. In 2020, my Nanay was yanked away from the only home she has known all her adult life, then cooped unceremoniously into Lino’s pretentious home 65km away. [At this point, in his urn inside his columbarium in Pasay, Tatay rolls his eyes and smirks at this deceit, uttering “simple living” under his breath — as he always did in this context.] This isolation in the boondocks was understandable during Covid, but 2022 came and went with no consequence.

For the record, Lino making this decision for our Nanay without asking what she wants, where she prefers to spend her twilight years, or informing her what they intend to do with her home, our ancestral home — is not only criminal, it’s evil!

This would also be an opportune time where a lifestyle check should have been performed on the Diala family, which would have exhibited blatant upgrades. For instance, @Hannah Diala Sarmiento was suddenly flashing expensive, fashionable braces! So respectful of the deceased. She could have at least waited a few weeks before spending the money that Tiang Emma’s death had afforded them.

Regarding Nanay’s home, our ancestral home, my siblings proceeded to convert it into a ladies’ dormitory. To make more money, of course! Shame on you. Shame on all of you! No wonder she doesn’t want to spend any more time with you than she already did.

And all throughout these events, I have not been informed of these plans which have already been set in motion by the time I found out. As the youngest of Nanay, I spent the most years in that house, and would of course still have some of my belongings tucked away in some dusty corner or in secret compartments my Tatay and Lolo Dianong built into it.

By the time I was aware of the renovations, I made them aware that I still have some of my stuff in the house that I needed to sift through. To which I was angrily blamed for not informing them of this prior to their dormitory conversion, which as I pointed out, I was kept in the dark about.

I expressed my desire to get the Whirlpool clothes dryer which my then-wife and I purchased in the 1990s. This was subsequently submerged in Ondoy’s widespread floods in 2009, while serving as the burial site of a rat which managed to find shelter and eventually death within it. I have somehow managed to repair it in 2013 but admittedly, figuring out how to deal with the dead rat offered a greater challenge. Especially when you discover it at a much later date.

Sadly, our washing machine did not survive that same flood. So on a September Tuesday in 2014, with my fitness trainer John’s help, we hauled that big-ass dryer from the deepest recesses of my duplex onto Nanay’s second floor dining area, the only spot with a place for it.

So when I was asking for it, to get it from Nanay’s house, there was an awkward silence. It was more like a guilty silence. Because someone already took it! Knowing that it wasn’t theirs to take! When asked — they, of course, blamed my Nanay claiming that they asked her what to do with it and allegedly she told them to take it. Liars! My mother knew fully well it was mine and would never make a decision without consulting me, the owner.

Strange that they never considered asking me, having lived in that house the longest, aside from my parents. So the dryer was in Punta Fuego, and I asked that it be brought back. Once it arrived in Makati, I promptly gave it away. It was mine to give and not for them to take.

Blessed are the blameless, for they read the Bible and go to church, so these the self-righteous could not possibly do any wrong, right? Wrong.

Needless to say, except for that traveling dryer I never managed to get any of my things. But just a thought, might a Manila Science High School yearbook interest anybody else except the sole individual in the family to graduate from this school? Yet items found in that house that were clearly mine were never offered to me.

As the scripture states, “Do unto others…” That is if you read the Bible. And only if you understand it. In all its complex history: having been written originally in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, then translated ad infinitum; as well as the political context surrounding it.

Now on to the maths: in the screenshots of my conversation below with Hannah, just as Tiang Emma was admitted into St. Luke’s BGC, notice whose name appears across the highest donated cash amount — the most help from among those who are not dollar-enabled? Yes, it was me. I am that one from Manila who donated the most money to cover my Tiang Emma’s hospital and interment expenses.

Ninong Dong: 50k

Dong direct to Veronica: 15k

— — — — — TOTAL ₱65k

Nanay Nene: 10k

Tita Luchie: 15k

Tito Lino: 20k

Nenita Garcia: 9,700

Makati Lighthouse: 20k

Ate Nice Family: 20k

Ang naipadala po nila Tita Kathy at mga kapatid ay 280k po.

What is clearly missing here is their own contribution to their own single mother who gave them all a roof over their heads and a place they could call home, a series of apartments to provide for them a steady source of income, and ownership of the land where all of these are built upon.

The fact that the Covid-19 virus could not have possibly entered the farthest room in the house unaided by humans, where Tiang Emma, fearing the virus in her old age, have quarantined herself — unless one believes in immaculate conceptions?

Yet, despite having recouped all their expenses from what the Pulidos sent, they still kept accepting all cash donations so they even managed to turn a profit from Tiang Emma’s suffering! That’s just deceptively and devilishly devious! These aren’t blessings as most Catholics prefer to call any benefits received which they didn’t work for. How can these be blessings when these were accumulated through lies and deceit?

In the same vein where just because one can doesn’t mean one should — I am of the opinion that excess contributions be summarily acknowledged and used instead to extend assistance beyond the initial recipient, to those who are still in need.

Last January 15, I sent a message to Ate Hennie for Nanay and then posted that same message here for all the world to see, with the heading: “If this isn’t a cry for help, I don’t know what is. Thank you very little.”

NOT. ONE. OFFER. OF. ASSISTANCE. Maybe I should worship your god and pray that you all meet him very, very soon. If you can do this type of hocus pocus arithmetic without running through serious conscience barriers, your resolve is clearly much greater than your religiosity. Or your faith. Or your fear of God. Or your desire to go to heaven.

See you all in hell, where my throne is only slightly lower than Luchie… er Luchie-fer.

Copyright Donato R. Vytiaco © 2024 #donvy #Vytiaco #Diala #Pulido

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